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A BRIEF HISTORY 

OF THE 

GREAT WAR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 

ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



A BRIEF HISTORY 



OF THE 



GREAT WAR 



BY 



CARLTON T. H. HAYES 

•* ti 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN COLUMBIA. UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR OF "A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL 

HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE" 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1920 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1920, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1920. 



^ 



MAY 2U 1320 
►CU571033 



TO 



THOSE STUDENTS OF HIS WHO LOYALLY LEFT THEIR 
BOOKS AND PROUDLY PAID THE SUPREME SACRI- 
FICE IN THE CAUSE OF HUMAN SOLIDARITY 
AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY 
THE AUTHOR INSCRIBES 
THIS BOOK 



PREFACE 

The following pages constitute a connected story of the late 
war from its origins to the conclusion of the Peace of Versailles, 
not for the edification of "experts," military or other, but rather 
for the enlightenment of the general reader and student. A 
"definitive" history of the war will never be written ; it is much 
too early, of course, even to attempt it. All that the author has 
here essayed to do is to sketch tentatively what seem to him 
its broad outlines — domestic politics of the several belligerents 
no less than army campaigns and naval battles, — and in present- 
ing his synthesis to be guided so far as in him lay by an honest 
desire to put heat and passion aside and to write candidly and 
objectively for the instruction of the succeeding generation. 

The author is under special obligation to Messrs. Dodd, 
Mead and Company for the kind permission which they have 
accorded him of drawing freely upon the articles on "The War 
of the Nations" which he wrote in 1914, 1915, and 1916 for their 
invaluable New International Year Book. In the opening chap- 
ter of the present work the author has also incorporated a few 
paragraphs from the last chapter of his Political and Social 
History of Modern Europe, to which, in a way, the Brief History 
or the Great War is supplementary. 

Carlton J. H. Hayes. 

Afton, New York, 
April 5, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I. The Great War Comes 

The General Cause : International Anarchy 

The Immediate Cause : Germany . 

The Occasion : The Assassination of an Archduke 

II. Germany Conquers Belgium and Invades France 
Mobilization and Strategy 
The Conquest of Belgium 
The Invasion of France .... 
German Gains in the West — and Failure 

I III. Russia Fails to Overwhelm Germany 
The Russian Invasion of East Prussia 
The Russian Invasion of Galicia 
The German Invasion of Russian Poland 
The Security of Serbia 

IV. Great Britain Masters the Seas 
Importance of Sea Power 
The Participation of Japan 
The Conquest of the German Colonies 
Turkey's Support of Germany 
Germany's Counter-Offensive on the Seas 

V. The Allies Endeavor to Dominate the Near East 
Allied Optimism in the Spring of 191 5 
The Attack on the Dardanelles 
Italy's Entry into the War 



VI. Russia Retreats 

Mackensen's Drive : The Austrian Recovery of Galicia 
Hindenburg's Drive : The German Conquest of Poland 
Revival of Political Unrest in Russia 
Failure of the Allies to Relieve Russia 



VII. Germany Masters the Near East .... 

Decline of Allied Prestige 

Bulgaria's Entry into the War and the Conquest of Serbia 124 



PAGE 
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121 

121 



x CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

Failure of the Allies to Relieve Serbia : The Salonica 

Expedition 

Completion of German Mastery of the Near East 

VIII. Germany Fails to Obtain a Decision in 1916 
Teutonic Optimism at the Beginning of 1916 . 
The Difficulty at Verdun : "They ShaU Not Pass'%, 
The Difficulty in the Trentino : Italy's Defense 
The Difficulty in Ireland : Suppression of Rebellion 
Difficulties at Sea : The Grand Fleet and the United 
States Government 

IX. The Allies Fail to Obtain a Decision in 1916 
Attempted Coordination of Allied Plans . 
Simultaneous Allied Drives : The Somme, the Isonzo 

and the Sereth . 

The Participation and Defeat of Rumania 
Stalemate and the Teutonic Peace Drive 

X. The United States Intervenes 

The Stakes : Isolation or a League of Nations ? 
The Occasion : Unrestricted Submarine Warfare 
The Problem : Preparedness ..... 

XI. Russia Revolts and Makes "Peace" ... 

Destruction of Russian Autocracy: the March (19 17) 

Revolution 

Disintegration of Democracy : Political and Military 

Experiments 

Dictatorship of the Bolsheviki : the November (1917) 

Revolution 

Defection of Russia : the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . 

XII. The Allies Pave the Way for Ultimate Victory . 
Allied Plans and Prospects in 19 17 . 
The Lesson of the Hindenburg Line 
Recovery of Allied Prestige in the Near East . 
Seeming Obstacles to Allied Victory 

XIII. Germany Makes the Supreme Effort 
"Whom the Gods Would Destroy" 
The Drive against the British : The Battle of Picardy 
The Drive against the French : The Aisne and the Oise 



PAGE 

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143 

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CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

The Drive against the Italians : The Piave . . -317 
The Final German Drive : The Second Battle of the 

Marne 320 

XIV. The Allies Triumph and Central Europe Revolts . 326 

Allied Victories in the West 326 

Allied Intervention in Russia . . . . . " . 334 
Allied Triumph in the Near East : Surrender of Bulgaria 

and Turkey ........ 342 

The Collapse of Austria-Hungary : Resurgence of Op* 

pressed Nationalities ....... 348 

The End of Hostilities : Flight of William II . . . 356 

XV. A New Era Begins 365 

The Settlement „ 365 

The Losses ......... 388 

Landmarks of the New Era ...... 395 

Appendix I : The Covenant of the League of Nations . .413 

Appendix II: American Reservations to the Treaty of Ver- 
sailles 4 2 4 

Appendix III : Proposed Agreement Between the United 

States and France 428 

Select Bibliography . . 431 

Index 437 



MAPS IN COLOR 

PRECEDING PAGE 

i. Europe, 1914 1 

2. Germany, 1871-1914 7 

3. Austria-Hungary, 1914 15 

4. War Area of Western Europe 27 

5. War Area of Eastern Europe 41 

6. The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan States ... 81 

7. Central Europe, January, 1916 143 

8. Central Europe, March, 1918 299 

9. Europe, 1920 365 

10. Colonial Dominions of the Great Powers .... 401 



SKETCH MAPS 



PAGE 



i . Farthest German Advance in France 34 

2. Allies' Western Front, December, 1914 .... 37 

3. Japan's Position in Relation to Korea, Kiao-chao, and 

China 63 

4. German "War Zone" of February 18, 19 1 5 .... 77 

5. The Dardanelles Campaign, 1915 86 

6. Habsburg Territories Promised to Italy by the Allies . 93 

7. The Austro-Italian War Area 96 

8. Eastern Battle Front, 1915 103 

9. The Second Battle of Ypres, April-May, 191 5 . . . 116 

10. The Allied Offensive in September, 1915 .... 119 

11. Serbia, 1914 128 

12. Asiatic Turkey, 1914 138 

13. Mesopotamia and Its Strategic Position . . . .141 

14. Battle Lines around Verdun, 19 16 154 

15. The Russian Drive on the Styr, 1916 172 

16. The Russian Drive on the Sereth, 19 16 . . . .173 

xiii 



xiv SKETCH MAPS 

17. The Italian Campaign against Gorizia .... 

18. Battle of the Somme 

19. Rumania and Transylvania, 1916 

20. German "War Zone" of February i, 1917 

21. The Western Front near Arras and on the Aisne 

22. The Heights of the Aisne 

23. Battles of Messines Ridge and Ypres .... 

24. Battle of Cambrai 

25. Scene of British and Arab Advance in Palestine . 

26. The Austro-German Invasion of Italy .... 

27. German Gains, 1918 . 

28. Second Phase of the Battle of Picardy .... 

29. Scene of the Last Austrian Offensive .... 

30. Scene of the Last German Offensive : The Second Battle 

of the Marne 

31. Principal Changes in Western Front from August, 19 14 

to November, 1918 

32. The St. Mlhiel Drive of the Americans 

2,^- The Franco-American Offensive on the Meuse and in the 
Argonne 

34. Allied Intervention in Russia 

35. Macedonian Front at Time of Bulgaria's Surrender . 

36. Progress of British and Arab Offensives in Turkey 

October, 1918 

37. Territory Occupied by the Allies under the Armistice of 

November ii 

38. New Western Boundaries of Germany .... 

39. New Eastern Boundaries of Germany .... 



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347 

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375 



A BRIEF HISTORY 

OF THE 

GREAT WAR 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF 
THE GREAT WAR 

CHAPTER I 
THE GREAT WAR COMES 

THE GENERAL CAUSE: INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY 

Self-interest was the dominant note of the years imme- 
diately preceding the outbreak of the Great War. In economics 
and in politics, among individuals, social classes, and nations, 
flourished a seJjL-interest that tended more and more to degenerate 
into mere cynical selfishness. Pseudo-scientists there were to 
justify the tendency as part of an inevitable "struggle for exist- 
ence" and to extol it as assuring the "survival of the fittest." 

Economic circumstances had provided the setting for the 
dogma of self-interest. The latest age in world history had 
been the age of steam and electricity, of the factory and the 
workshop, of the locomotive, the steamship, and the automobile. 
It had been the age of big competitive business. Between the 
capitalists of the new era had developed the keenest rivalry in 
exploiting machinery, mines, raw materials, and even human 
beings, with a view to securing the largest share of the world's 
riches and the world's prestige. It was a race of the strong, and 
"the devil take the hindmost." 

Competition in big business gave manners and tone to the 
whole age. It inspired a multitude of mankind to emulate the 
"captains of industry." It furnished the starting-point and 
the main impulse for the development of the doctrines of Social- 
ists and of Anarchists and of all those who laid stress upon 
"class consciousness" and " class struggle." It even served to set 
farmers against manufacturers and to pit "producers" against 
"consumers." To secure power and thereby to obtain wealth, 
or to secure wealth and thereby to obtain power, became the 
more or less conscious end and aim of individuals and of whole 
classes. 






k 



2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Trade — the veritable red blood of modern industrial life 
— has not been, and from its nature cannot be, narrowly national. 
Not only must there be commerce between one highly civilized 
nation and another, but there must likewise be trade between 
an industrialized nation and more backward peoples in tropical 
or semi-tropical regions. The modern business man has need 
of raw materials from the tropics ; he has manufactured goods 
to sell in return ; most important of all, he frequently finds 
that investments in backward countries are especially lucrative 
in themselves and stimulative of greater and more advantageous 
trade. So self-interest has been pursued abroad as well as at 
home, and usually with the most calamitously anarchical results. 
Whatever restrictions might be imposed by a strong national 
state on the selfish activities of its citizens at home were either 
non-existent or ineffective in restraining them wherever govern- 
ments were unstable or weak. In backward countries the 
foreign exploiter often behaved as though "getting rich quick" 
was the supreme obligation imposed upon him by the civilization 
whose representative and exponent he was. The natives suffered 
from the unregulated dealings of the foreigners. And the 
foreigners, drawn perhaps from several different nations, carried 
their mutual economic rivalries into the sphere of international 
competition and thereby created "danger zones" or "arenas of 
friction." 

After 1870 this_aspect of capitalistic imperialism was increas- 
ingly in evidence. Any one who would follow an outline story 
of the exploitation of backward regions by business men of Great 
Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United 
States would perceive the process and would appreciate its 
attendant dangers. Any one who is at all familiar with the 
"arenas of friction" in Egypt, in China, in Siam, in the Sudan, 
in Morocco, in Persia, in the Ottoman Empire, and in the Bal- 
kans would be in possession of a valuable clew to a significant 
cause of every war of the twentieth century, particularly to 
the chief cause of the Great War. 

What had complicated the situation was the fact that trade, 
though in essence international, had been conducted in practice 
on a national basis, and that foreign investors had been per- 
petually appealing for support not to an international conscience 
and an international police but to the patriotism and armed 
forces of their respective national states. In other words, 
anarchy had continued to characterize international politics as 
well as domestic economics. 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 3 

There was no international organization. There was no 
general authority for the determination of disputes and for the 
regulation of world interests. There were at the opening of the 
twentieth century some fifty states, in theory absolutely inde- 
pendent, sovereign, and equal. In fact, the fifty were very 
unequal and even the strongest among them was not strong 
enough to maintain its independence should the others unite 
against it. Yet each proceeded to act on the assumption in 
most cases that it was self-sufficient and that its own self-interest 
was its supreme guide. 

Running through the whole anarchic state-system, as woof 
through warp, was the doctrine of nationality. It is a common- 
place to us that a compact people speaking the same language 
and sharing the same historical traditions and social customs 
should be politically united as an independent nation. To the 
nineteenth century, however, nationalism was a revolutionary 
force. At its dawn there was no free German nation, no free 
Italian nation. But the all-conquering armies of the French 
Revolutionaries brought to the disjointed and dispirited peoples 
of Europe a new gospel of Fraternity, that men of the same 
nation should be brothers-in-arms to defend their liberties 
against the tyrant and their homes against the foreign foe. 
Poetry glorified the idea of national patriotism, religion sanc- 
tioned it, and political theory invested it with all the finality of 
a scientific dogma. Within a century, the spirit of nationality 
produced an independent Greece, a Serbia, a Rumania, a Bul- 
garia, a Belgium, a Norway, an Italy, a Germany. Each nation — 
old and young — was proud of its national language, its national 
customs, its frequently fictitious but always glorious national 
history, and above all, of its national political unification and 
freedom. 

Everywhere the doctrine of nationality has brought forth 
fruits in abundance. It has awakened all peoples to national 
self-consciousness. It has inspired noble and glorious deeds. 
It has stimulated art and literature. It has promoted popular 
education and political democracy. It should have led, not 
backwards to eighteenth-century indifferent cosmopolitanism, 
but forwards to twentieth-century inter-nationalism, to a con- 
federation of all the free nations of the world for mutual co- 
operation and support. Hither, on the eve of the Great War, 
it had not led. And this was the tragedy of nationalism. 

Nationalism was utilized too often to point citizens to what 
was peculiar to their own nation rather than to what was common 



4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

to all mankind. It served to emphasize the exclusiveness of each 
state and to promote selfishness in a new and national form. It 
led nations which had not yet achieved complete unity and inde- 
pendence, like the Irish, the Poles, the Czechs, the Serbs, and the 
Rumans, to combat more fortunate nations ; and among the per- 
fected nations it aroused such selfish intolerance as to render them 
tyrannical over dissident minorities and to cause them to enter- 
tain the notion that they were manifestly destined to impose their 
own brand of civilization or Kultur upon, if not arbitrarily to 
rule over, "inferior" races. 

Nationalism, moreover, prompted whole peoples to give patri- 
otic support to the pretensions of their relatively few fellow-citi- 
zens who in less favored lands were seeking profits at the expense 
of natives and perhaps of neighbors. The foreign tradesman or 
investor was under no obligation to an impartial international 
tribunal : he had only to present his international grievances to 
the uncritical and sympathetic ears of his distant fellow-nationals, 
with the usual result that his cause was championed at home and 
that redress for his real or fancied wrongs was forthcoming from a 
single one of the fifty sovereign states. And when tradesmen or 
investors of other nationalities appealed from the same distant 
regions to their several states, what had been an arena of economic 
friction between competing capitalists in backward lands speedily 
became an arena of political friction between civilized sovereign 
states. 

In this fashion the spirit of nationalism operated to reenforce 
the anarchy both of international politics and of international 
economics. Modern imperialism, curiously enough, became an 
arc on the circle of exclusive nationalism. It was a vicious circle, 
and the only way to break it seemed to involve the method most 
terribly anarchic — employment of brute force — war ! It had 
been in view of this grim eventuality that in the nineteenth cen- 
tury every sovereign state had been arming itself and utilizing 
every landmark in the progress of civilization in order to forge 
instruments of destruction. Imperialism — Nationalism — Mili- 
tarism — these three stalked forth hand in hand. 

Armed force was comparatively little used ; its mere existence 
and the mere threat of its use ordinarily sufficed. Indirectly, if 
not directly, however, force and power were final arbitrament be- 
tween each two of the fifty sovereign states. And it was no eu- 
phemism that every such state was styled a "Power," and that 
certain states on account of the thickness and weight of their ar- 
mor and the success that customarily attended their threats were 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 5 

popularly dubbed "Great Powers." In a world like this there 
was little chance for international order and security. It was in- 
ternational anarchy — and that was all. 

For many generations before the Great War the delicate rela- 
tions between the jealously sovereign states — aptly called the 
" balance of power" — had been manipulated by a professional 
class of "diplomatists" with the aid of military and naval attaches 
and of spies and secret service. The customs and methods of 
diplomacy had been determined in large part at a time when they 
conformed quite nicely to the purposes and ideals of the divine- 
right dynasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but 
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when democracy was 
constantly preached and increasingly practiced, they might have 
seemed old-fashioned and anachronistic. To be sure, there were 
some modifications both in the objects and in the methods of di- 
plomacy : as a result of the industrial changes in our own day, 
economic questions provided a larger and more attractive field for 
tortuous diplomatic negotiation than mere dynastic problems ; 
and by the use of the telegraph, the telephone, and the cable the 
individual diplomatist was kept in closer touch than formerly 
with his home government. Still, however, the diplomatists were 
mainly persons of a class, elderly, suave, insinuating, moving 
mysteriously their wonders to perform. Democrats who in many 
countries had laid violent hands upon innumerable institutions 
of despotism and had brought most matters of public concern to 
the knowledge of a universal electorate, hesitated to assail this 
last relic of divine-right monarchy or to trust the guidance of in- 
ternational relations to an enfranchised democracy which might 
by the slightest slip upset the balance of power and plunge an 
anarchic world into an abyss. 

So the diplomatists in our own day continued to manage affairs 
after their old models. They got what they could for their fellow- 
nationals by cajolery or by threats. If they thought they could 
do more for their fellow-nationals by making special "deals" with 
diplomatists of other Powers, they did so, and presto! a "con- 
vention," an "entente," or a "treaty of alliance" defensive or 
offensive or both. The game had become quite involved and ab- 
sorbing by 1914, and quite hazardous. Germany thought she 
needed aid to enable her to retain the loot which she had taken 
from France ; Austria-Hungary thought she needed assistance 
in the development of her Balkan policy ; Italy thought she must 
have help in safeguarding Rome and in defending herself from 
possible French or Austrian aggression. So German and Aus- 



■ 



6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

trian diplomatists formed a "defensive alliance" in 1879, and 
Italy, joining them in 1882, transformed it into the "Triple Alli- 
ance." This was the beginning of the alignment of the Great 
Powers in our own generation. Diplomatists of republican 
France and autocratic Russia cemented the secret defensive 
"Dual Alliance" in 1892. Diplomatists of democratic Great 
Britain and oligarchical Japan formed a Far Eastern "alliance" 
in 1902. Diplomatists of Great Britain and France effected a 
rapprochement and an "entente" in 1904. To this "entente" 
the diplomatists of Russia were admitted in 1907. And between 
Triple Alliance and Triple Entente the balance of power was so 
neatly adjusted that from 1907 to 1914 one trivial occurrence 
after another almost upset it. 

Of course, the smaller states — the "lesser powers" — were 
mainly at the mercy of the "Great Powers" and their delicate 
balance. On the very eve of the Great War diplomatists of Ger- 
many and Great Britain were secretly negotiating the virtual 
partition of the colonial empire of Portugal. On the other hand, 
changes among the lesser powers might produce prodigious dan- 
ger to the balance of the Great Powers. The defeat of Turkey by 
four little Balkan states in 1912-1913 appeared on the surface to 
be slightly more advantageous to Russia than to Austria-Hungary, 
with the result that Germany and her Habsburg ally were thrown 
into a paroxysm of fear, and one Power after another consecrated 
the year 1913 to unprecedented armed preparedness. By 1914 
it actually required nothing less trivial in itself than the assassi- 
nation of an archduke to exhaust the imagination and endeavor of 
the professional balancers between the Powers and to send the 
diplomatists scurrying homewards, leaving the common people 
of the several nations to confront one another in the most formi- 
dable and portentous battle-array that the world in all its long 
recorded history had ever beheld. 

Those last years before the storm and the hurricane were indeed 
a strange, nightmarish time. Man had gained a large measure 
of control over his physical environment and a very small amount 
of knowledge about his true political, social, and economic needs. 
In most countries democracy and nationalism were growing by 
leaps and bounds. In other countries there was more or less 
mute protest against interference with national right and demo- 
cratic development. Everywhere the Industrial Revolution was 
providing an economic foundation for international federation. 
Yet the spirit of the age seemed incapable of expression save in 
institutions which had been distantly inherited and which in most 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 7 

instances had outlived their usefulness. Recurring crises between 
sovereign states and increasing social unrest in every country- 
were alike signs of the passing of a worn-out age and of the coming 
of a new age which should more perfectly square institutions with 
vital popular needs and longings. Those three shibboleths of the 
nineteenth century, — Nationalism, Imperialism, Militarism, — 
as interpreted in the traditional language of the exclusive state- 
system, were producing the utmost confusion. Together they 
embodied the spirit of Anarchy, a spirit that could not perma- 
nently endure on a shrinking globe or among social animals. To- 
gether they were operating to produce a cataclysm which should 
stand forth as one of those great crises in Man's historic evolution, 
such as the break-up of the Roman Empire, the Reformation, and 
the French Revolution. And the cataclysm came in the Great 
War. Its underlying cause was international anarchy. Its 
stakes were the perpetuation or the destruction of that anarchy. 

THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE: GERMANY 

The vices of modern political and economic life might be exem- 
plified in greater or less degree by reference to the history of any 
Power or any country. Obviously they were more developed in 
the " Great Powers " than in the "Lesser Powers " ; and of all the 
" Great Powers" the most perfect exemplar of nationalism, im- 
perialism, and militarism, and therefore the most viciously an- 
archic in international relations, was Germany. It was Germany 
which precipitated the Great War. 

Militarism is not merely the possession of large armed forces ; ^, 
it involves also the exaltation of such armed forces to the chief 
place in the state, the subordination to them of the civil authori- 
ties, the reliance upon them in every dispute. In explaining why 
a given nation may be peculiarly predisposed to militarism, at 
least four factors should be taken into account : (1) geographical 
situation, (2) historical traditions, (3) political organization, 
and (4) social structure. In every country one or another of 
these factors has worked toward militarism, sometimes two or 
three. In Germany all four have been fully operative in that 
direction. 

For centuries German lands had been battlefields for aggressive 
neighbors. Situated in the center of Europe, with weak natural 
frontiers, these lands had been the prey of Spaniards, Swedes, 
Frenchmen, Poles, and Russians. From the Thirty Years' War, 
in the first half of the seventeenth century, down to the domi- 






8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

nation of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the first decade of the nineteenth 
century, most of the German states were at the mercy of foreigners. 
What international prestige Germans retained throughout that 
dreary period was credited to the military prowess of Austria and 
more particularly to the waxing strength of Prussia. Prussia had 
no easily defensible boundaries, and her rise to eminence was due 
to the soldierly qualities of her Hohenzollern sovereigns — the 
Great Elector, King Frederick William I, and Frederick the Great. 
When, in the nineteenth century, the German Empire was created, 
it was the work of the large, well-organized, well-equipped army 
of Prussia, and it was achieved only at the price of French military 
defeat and of diplomatic concessions to Russia. After the crea- 
tion of the German Empire in 1871 most of its citizens continued 
to believe that its geographical position between populous Russia 
and well-armed France required the guarantee of militarism for 
its future maintenance. 

Despite the drawback of their geographical situation the Ger- 
mans had finally achieved national unification, and among a 
people zealously worshiping the spirit of nationalism the process 
by which they had secured national union became their most hal- 
lowed historical tradition. It will be recalled that the first serious 
attempt to achieve the political unification of the Germanies was 
made by the democratic Frankfort Assembly in the stormy days 
of 1 848- 1 849; that it represented a combination of nationalism 
and liberalism, of the German nation with the German democracy. 
But this first attempt failed. The second attempt, Bismarck's 
attempt "by iron and blood," was crowned with success. Bis- 
marck's three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870-1871, solidly estab- 
lished the united German Empire. "Nothing succeeds like suc- 
cess," and the three wars simultaneously sanctified the union of 
nationalism and militarism, of the German nation with the Prus- 
sian army. Moreover, as Prussia henceforth embraced two- 
thirds the area and three-fifths the population of the Empire and 
as the Hohenzollern king of Prussia was henceforth the German 
Emperor, the whole Empire was inevitably Prussianized, and 
Prussian history and Prussian tradition supplied the patriotic 
impulse to all Germans. In this way the tradition of militarism 
— the most important one that Prussia had — gradually sup- 
planted the more cosmopolitan and cultural traditions which had 
once nourished in southern and central Germany, and in the pan- 
theon of national heroes all German patriots inscribed tablets to 
the long line of warlike Hohenzollern monarchs, to the valorous 
Queen Louise, to Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Moltke, and Roon, to 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 9 

the unscrupulous and forceful Bismarck — a veritable galaxy of 
Thors and Wodens. 

With this tradition the political organization of the German 
Empire was in perfect harmony. Chief authority in the central 
government was confided to the Bundesrat, a close corporation 
of diplomatists representing the hereditary princes of the German 
states, meeting in secret session, and largely controlled by the 
chancellor, an official appointed by, and responsible to, the king 
of Prussia. Only secondary authority was intrusted to the 
popularly elected Reichstag. Prussia, as the dominant state in 
the confederation, retained her oligarchical and plutocratic form 
of government, with her parliament elected by the absurd and 
thoroughly undemocratic three-class system of voting. The 
Emperor, in training and profession a soldier rather than a civilian, 
was commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and his tenure 
was for life. Under the constitution of Prussia, whose contingent 
comprised the greater part of the German army, the Emperor- 
King might apply indefinitely from year to year to the support of 
the army the amount last voted by the parliament, instead of 
being obliged to depend upon annual financial grants. The Ger- 
man soldier took an oath of allegiance to the Kaiser and not to 
the Constitution. In Germany, finally, the military authorities 
were accountable for their acts only to military tribunals. Such 
an affair as that at Saverne in Alsace in 1913-1914 ] was a clear 
illustration of the disregard of the military for civilian rights and 
of the inability of civilians under German political institutions 
to obtain redress for their just grievances against the military. 

Most potent of all factors in predisposing Germany to milita- 
rism was the structure of her society. In Germany more nearly 
than in any other highly industrialized country, agriculture 
has held its own and the agricultural classes have suffered less in 
purse and in prestige through competition with manufacturers 
and tradesmen. Not only have the German farmers preserved 
their economic independence, but a conspicuous group of them 
have continued to our own day to enjoy the greatest social pres- 
tige and to exert the greatest influence in politics. These are the 

1 Saverne, or Zabern as the Germans called it, was the scene throughout 1913- 
1914 of the harshest and most offensive conduct of the German garrison toward the 
native civilian population, culminating in the slashing of a lame cobbler by a 
Junker lieutenant. In vain did the local authorities and even the Reichstag en- 
deavor to establish the supremacy of the civil courts in handling the situation; 
the army proved itself superior to the law, and the responsible officers received no 
part of the punishment which they richly deserved. For a detailed account of the 
Saverne Affair, see C. D. Hazen, Alsace-Lorraine under German Rule (1917), ch. 
viii. 



io A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

landholding nobles and the country gentlemen of Prussia — the 
squirearchy, or Junkerthum. From time immemorial they had 
divided their attention between oversight of their extensive es- 
tates and the service of their Hohenzollern overlord in his civil 
bureaucracy or in his army. Unlike their fellows in France no 
mighty revolution had wrested their lands from them and no 
republican regime had deprived them of their offices and privi- 
leges. In our own generation the efficient civil service in Prussia 
and throughout Germany was still largely recruited from them ; 
most commissioned officers in the large Prussian army were still 
appointed from their number ; and they were still utilizing their 
positions of trust and power in order to serve their own class- 
interests. The Junkers could afford to be most intensely loyal 
and patriotic. They extolled militarism, and the extolling of mili- 
tarism exalted them. 

Second only to the Junkers in significance and influence were 
the capitalists, the product of that amazing industrial and com- 
mercial evolution through which Germany had passed in the last 
forty years. Not a country in the world had witnessed in so 
brief a time an economic transformation of such prodigious di- 
mensions as the German Empire had experienced. Cities had 
grown rapidly ; factories had been reared overnight ; mine- 
shafts had been quickly sunk into the bowels of the earth ; an 
ever expanding fleet of merchant vessels had put to sea, carrying 
German manufactures to the uttermost parts of the globe ; tra- 
ders, suddenly gorged with gold, had speedily turned investors, 
and, imitating the example of older foreign industrialists, had 
rushed to exploit Africa and South Sea Islands and China and 
South America and the Ottoman Empire. 

The capitalists, and the middle classes generally, might have 
been expected to come into sharp collision with the Junkers, 
so divergent were the natural interests of the two classes. As a 
matter of fact they did collide repeatedly in shaping domestic 
policies, and much of the internal history of the German Empire 
from 1870 to 1914 was the story of the conflicts and compromises 
between them. One sacred German institution, however, kept 
the class-struggle within patriotic bounds, and that institution 
was militarism. German traders and investors, arriving late 
in foreign and backward lands, usually found the keenest economic 
competition already proceeding between business-men of Great 
Britain, France, or- some other industrialized Power; and were 
they to have an equal or a better chance in the international 
scramble for economic exploitation they would have to invoke 




FT 



nvich 14 



THE GREAT WAR COMES n 

the armed forces of Germany, their own "Great Power." At 
home a huge military machine was ready to aim and fire. Ad- 
mitting that the German army of the 1870's was relied upon 
chiefly for defense against potential attacks of neighboring France 
and Russia, it may be affirmed that twenty and thirty years later 
it had become the standing threat by means of which German 
citizens were prosecuting their unregulated economic activities 
abroad and by means of which the whole German Empire was 
championing unrestrained anarchy in international relations. 
To the existing army, the capitalistic interests of Germany added 
the rapidly expanding navy with the threats therein implied. 
The Junkers officered all the armed forces and naturally extolled 
militarism. Militarism proved serviceable to the capitalists, and 
they in turn extolled militarism. By the iron ring of militarism 
were agricultural and industrial interests wedded. The Junkers 
were now serving the capitalists, and the capitalists were honor- 
ing the Junkers. The promise "to obey" was left out of the 
covenant, for both contracting parties had freely given that pledge 
to the high priest who solemnized the nuptials, to the Kaiser him- 
self. 

Even in Germany protests were raised from time to time against 
the extent of militarism and against some of the uses to which it 
was put. The numerically important party of the Social Demo- 
crats were particularly vocal in their denunciations. The Center, 
or Catholic, party had not always taken kindly to militarism. 
There were various groups of radicals who had inveighed against 
it. It was naturally viewed with dislike by dissident nationalities 
within the German Empire, such as the Poles, the Danes, and the 
Alsatians. Yet over these parties and factions the Junker and 
capitalistic patriots always managed to keep the upper hand, and 
in course of time the opposition dwindled rather than increased. 
The dissident nationalists and the pacifist radicals were relatively 
few and quite impotent. The Catholics grew more resigned to 
militarism when they discovered that it was being used to bolster 
up Austria-Hungary, Germany's Catholic ally. And the Social 
Democrats were never given to violence ; as time went on, they 
were too intent upon rolling up electoral pluralities to take a posi- 
tive stand that might shock the patriotic instincts of their fellow- 
countrymen. The militarists in Germany were having their own 
way. 

Forcefully the militarists cleared the way for German capitalists 
abroad. The German fist was shaken in the face of Japan in 1895 
and in the face of China in 1897 an d again in 1900. In 1896 there 



12 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

were threats against Great Britain in connection with affairs in 
South Africa. In 1898 there were veiled threats against the 
United States in connection with affairs in the Philippines, and 
in 1903 America was concerned with German threats against 
Venezuela. In 1896 the Kaiser himself, on a spectacular visit to 
Turkey, declared at Damascus that " at all times he was the friend 
and protector of the three hundred million Mussulmans who hon- 
ored Sultan Abdul Hamid as Caliph" — an assertion not only 
of German political and economic interests in the Ottoman Em- 
pire but also of German opposition to British rule in India and 
in Egypt and to French rule in northern Africa. In 1904 the 
Kaiser encouraged Russia to fight Japan, and in the following 
year he utilized Russian military defeats in order to compel 
France, Russia's ally, to alter her Moroccan policy. In 1908- 
1909 he stood "in shining armor" beside his own ally, Austria- 
Hungary, enabling her coolly and calmly to tear up an interna- 
tional treaty and to appropriate the Serb-Turkish provinces of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina despite the entreaties of the states of 
Serbia and Montenegro and despite the lively sympathy of the 
Russians with their South Slav (Jugoslav) brethren. In 191 1 
Germany unsheathed the sword at Agadir, and put it up again 
only on condition of receiving a hundred thousand square miles 
of French colonial dominion in equatorial Africa. In 191 2 and 
1913, during the Balkan Wars, Germany proved herself a bril- 
liant second to Austria-Hungary in preventing Serbian egress to 
the Adriatic, in driving the Montenegrins out of the town of 
Scutari which they had captured from the Turks, in erecting the 
petty principality of Albania, and otherwise in strengthening the 
Austro-German strangle-hold on Turkey and the Balkans. From 
1895 to 1 914 Germany pursued without cessation the policy of 
employing force and threats and bluff in order to win economic 
advantages and political prestige. "It is only by relying on our 
good German sword," wrote Crown Prince Frederick William in 
1913, "that we can hope to conquer that place in the sun which 
rightly belongs to us, and which no one will yield to us volun- 
tarily. . . . Till the world comes to an end, the ultimate deci- 
sion must rest with the sword." 

Militarism has been most frequently excused on the ground 
that it guarantees order and security. Paradoxical as it may 
seem, German militarism from 1895 to 1914 produced no such 
happy results. Not only was there a renewed epidemic of wars 
and rumors of war between states but there was the most as- 
tounding lack of a sense of security in Germany. The more 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 13 

Germany affronted Russia, France, and Great Britain, the higher 
rolled the wave of fear, even of panic, within Germany. Patri- 
otic militaristic societies came into being by the score, societies 
like the Navy League, the Pan-German League, the Security 
League, performing the twofold function of preparing the mind 
for additional deeds of aggression and of instilling in the same 
popular mind the basest sort of fright and terror. Under the 
auspices of these leagues what might be termed a "psychology of 
suggestion" was communicated gradually and skillfully to the 
German masses. Russia was "menacing," and as formerly there 
had been a "Yellow Peril" so now there was a "Slavic Peril." 
France was thirsting for "revenge," was "vengeful," but also the 
French were "decadent." The English were insanely "jealous" 
and Great Britain was "the vampire of the Continent." More- 
over, when " menacing " Russia and "vengeful" France and "jeal- 
ous" Britain tended to draw together, the German professors of 
suggestive psychology began to exploit the word "encirclement" 
and to expatiate upon the ring of dangerous, greedy neighbors by 
which the Fatherland and child Austria were surrounded. As 
the ring best known to the German mind was of iron, this foreign 
"encirclement" was naturally termed the "iron ring." 

One step further went the terrifying phrase-makers of Ger- 
many. Now that they had made up their own minds and had 
gone far toward fashioning the conviction of the bulk of their 
fellow-countrymen that sooner or later Germany and Austria- 
Hungary would be crushed to death by the inevitable pressure 
of the encircling "iron ring," they began to suggest and then to 
preach the necessity of a speedy open attack before the iron ring 
should become so strong as to be irresistible. Such an attack upon 
nominally peaceful neighbors could not be construed as " defensive 
war." Yet from the German standpoint it would not be "offen- 
sive war." The psychologists escaped from the dilemma by urging 
the plausible slogan of "preventive war." And to the problem 
of finding the most favorable opportunity for inaugurating the 
"preventive war," German militarists and German patriots turned 
their attention. In 1914 Germany was ready, and her governing 
class of Junkers and capitalists were willing, to precipitate war. 

THE OCCASION: THE ASSASSINATION OF AN ARCHDUKE 

On June 28, 191 4, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, nephew 
of the aged Emperor-King Francis Joseph and heir to the Habs- 
burg crowns, was assassinated, together with his wife, in the 



/" 



14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

streets of the Bosnian city of Serajevo by youthful Serb conspir- 
ators. The outrage caused an instantaneous outburst of in- 
dignation throughout Austria-Hungary and Germany. For on 
Francis Ferdinand many hopes had been pinned. His piety had 
made him a favorite with Catholics ; his loyalty to the German 
alliance augured well for the future maintenance of the interna- 
tional solidarity of the two great Teutonic Powers ; his vigorous 
patriotism and his conscientious fulfillment of administrative 
duties were harbingers of the continued integrity and stability 
of the Dual Monarchy after the demise of Francis Joseph. More- 
over, Francis Ferdinand was supposed to favor a special policy 
on the part of Austria-Hungary toward the Slavs of Southern 
Europe : to him was attributed the leadership in a scheme to 
transform the Dual Monarchy into a Triple Monarchy, in 
which the Serbs of Bosnia and the Serbo-Croats of Croatia- 
Slavonia and probably the Slovenes would constitute an au- 
tonomous entity resembling Austria and Hungary ; and to him, 
therefore, was imputed by patriotic Serbians and Montenegrins 
the inspiration of the hostile attitude which Austria-Hungary, 
with Germany's powerful backing, had taken, especially since 
1908, toward the territorial expansion of the two independent 
Serb kingdoms. 

Certainly the Serbs disliked Francis Ferdinand immensely and 
certainly from 1908 to 1914 they organized secret societies in 
Bosnia cis well as in Serbia and Montenegro and conducted a de- 
liberate propaganda with the more or less avowed object of wholly 
detaching the South Slav peoples from the Habsburg Empire. 
Naturally, then, when the official Austrian investigation into the 
archduke's assassination indicated that the plot had been exe- 
cuted by Bosnian youths animated by the revolutionary secret 
societies of the Serbs and with the connivance of at least two offi- 
cials of the kingdom of Serbia, the indignation of both Germans 
and Magyars was aroused. The government of Austria-Hungary 
solemnly affirmed that the very existence of the Dual Monarchy 
depended upon putting an end once for all to Serbian machina- 
tions, and with practical unanimity the responsible press of Ger- 
many declared that Austria-Hungary's welfare was Germany's 
welfare. But by the same token and with equal unanimity the 
press of Russia declared that Serbia's welfare was Russia's wel- 
fare. A new crisis, and a most serious one, had arisen in the 
Balkans. 

One week after the Serajevo assassination, a conference of 
German and Austrian dignitaries was held at Potsdam. Pre- 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 15 

cisely what was there discussed and determined upon we do not 
know. There is little doubt, however, that the Austro-Hun- 
garian government received carte blanche to use the archduke's 
murder as the pretext for dealing drastically with the one obstrep- 
erous Balkan state which had been thwarting the full realization 
of Teutonic political'and economic aims in southeastern Europe. 
As recently as August, 1913, Austria had formally invited Italy 
to cooperate with her in crushing Serbia. At that time no good 
excuse existed for such a use of force and Italy had declined the 
invitation, but now the occasion was propitious and the ruling 
classes in Germany were favorably disposed. 1 Perhaps the Ger- 
man dignitaries, mindful of the success of their former military 
threats in 1908-1909 and in 1912-1913, entertained the idea that 
if Germany were now again to stand ''in shining armor" beside 
her ally, Russia would once more back down and leave Serbia to 
the tender mercy of Austria-Hungary. It would be Germany's 
role by threats and intimidation to keep the Balkan conflict "lo- 
calized." Assuredly the German dignitaries must have foreseen 
the possibility of Russia's not backing down and of the resulting 
precipitation of a general and truly Great War. But such a war, 
precipitated by Austria's act and Germany's threat, might be 
the heralded "preventive war," through which Germany would 
break the "iron ring" of her jealous and greedy neighbors and 
assume in the wide world a position to which her might and her 
Kultur destined her. It was a peculiarly opportune moment for 
provoking the "preventive war," for at that very moment each 
one of the Entente Powers was embarrassed by domestic diffi- 
culties — Russia by a serious and violent strike of workingmen 
in Petrograd, France by an alarming popular opposition to the 
new three-year military law and by a scandalous murder trial of 
political importance at Paris, and Great Britain by the menace 
of civil war in Ireland. It was time to cast the die, and whether 
strained peace or vast war would eventuate was a minor consider- 
ation to the Imperial German Government. If Russia simply 
blustered, Germany would gain her point ; if Russia fought, 
Germany would succeed even better. It would be another in- 
stance of "heads, you lose; tails, I win." 

Such at any rate is the burden of the testimony of a conspicu- 
ous German diplomatist, Prince Lichnowsky, the Kaiser's am- 
bassador at London during those decisive days. In a private 

1 Italy, though an ally of Austria-Hungary and Germany, was not represented 
at the Potsdam Conference and was not privy to the Teutonic plot of 1914. Italy's 
refusal to cooperate with Austria-Hungary in 19 13 probably made the latter quite 
wary of her in 1914. 



16 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

memorandum prepared in 191 6 and indiscreetly published in 
March, 1918, Prince Lichnowsky gives the most damning lie to 
the official contention of his government that it had had no prior 
knowledge of Austria's plans against Serbia and that it had been 
most anxious to preserve peace and thereto had counseled moder- 
ation at Vienna. Referring to the Potsdam conference of July 5, 
1 9 14, he affirms that "an inquiry addressed to us by Vienna found 
positive assent among all personages in authority. Indeed, they 
added that there would be no harm if war with Russia were to 
result." Prince Lichnowsky, who from personal acquaintance 
with the members of the British government had come to believe 
implicitly in the pacific purposes and policy of Great Britain, was 
greatly perturbed by what he deemed the mistaken policy of his 
own government in backing Austria-Hungary's *selnsh Balkan 
policy, and he accordingly besought Herr von Jagow, the German 
foreign secretary, to recommend moderation to the Austrians. 

J "Herr von Jagow answered me that Russia was not ready, that 
there doubtless would be a certain amount of bluster, but the 
more firmly we stood by Austria the more would Russia draw 
back. He said Austria already was accusing us of want of spirit 
and we must not squeeze her ; and that, on the other hand, feel- 
ing in Russia was becoming more anti- German and so we must 
simply risk it." If any confirmation of this point of Prince Lich- 
nowsky's memorandum is required, it is provided by the reve- 
lations of Dr. Mtihlon, an ex-director of the Krupps, who learned 
from high German officials in the middle of July,'i9i/|,, that the 
Kaiser was fully cognizant of the Austrian purpose and that it 
was not the intention of the German government to maintain 
peace. 

J J Provided, as we now know, with secret assurances of Germany's 
unqualified support, Austria-Hungary presented to Serbia, on 
July 23, 1914, an ultimatum couched in the most peremptory 
terms ; it breathed a ruthless determination to crush all Pan- 
Serb plotting regardless of international usage or of constitutional 
formalities. The ultimatum alleged that, by failing' to suppress 
anti-Austrian conspiracies, Serbia had violated her promise of 
1909 to "live on good neighborly terms" with Austria-Hungary, 
and had compelled the government of the Dual Monarchy to 
abandon its attitude of benevolent and patient forbearance, to 
put an end "to the intrigues which form a perpetual menace to 
the tranquillity of the Monarchy," and to demand effective guar- 
antees from the Serbian government. As definite guarantees of 
good behavior Serbia was called upon to suppress anti-Austrian 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 17 

publications and societies, to discharge such governmental em- 
ployees as the Austro-Hungarian government should accuse of 
anti-Austrian propaganda, to exclude anti-Austrian teachers and 
textbooks from the Serbian schools, "to accept the collaboration 
in Serbia of representatives of the Austro-Hungarian government 
for the suppression of the subversive movement directed against 
the territorial integrity of the Monarchy," and to signify uncon- 
ditional acceptance of these and the other Austro-Hungarian de- 
mands within forty-eight hours. 

Thenceforth events marched fast. Russia, France, and Great 
Britain at once endeavored to obtain from Austria an extension 
of the time-limit of the ultimatum in order that the whole ques- 
tion might be submitted to general international negotiation, but 
to international anarchy rather than to international cooperation 
Austria-Hungary was committed and she sharply declined the 
request. On July 25, Serbia replied to the ultimatum, promising 
to comply with such demands as did not seem to impair her inde- 
pendence and sovereignty and offering to refer all disputed points 
to the Hague Tribunal or to a conference of the Great Powers. 
The Austrian government pronounced the reply evasive and un- 
satisfactory, broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia, and 
started the mobilization of her army. The Serbians removed 
their capital from Belgrade to Nish and began a counter-mobili- 
zation. War was clearly impending between Austria-Hungary 
and Serbia. 

But a much vaster and more terrible war was impending. To 
the Russian view it was obvious that Austria-Hungary was plan- 
ning to deprive Serbia of independence and to annihilate Russian 
influence in southeastern Europe. On the other hand the Ger- 
man government insisted that the quarrel was one which con- 
cerned Austria-Hungary and Serbia alone : it consistently and 
pertinaciously opposed the repeated efforts of Russian, British, 
French, and even Italian, diplomatists to refer the quarrel to an 
international congress or to the Hague Tribunal. Unequivocally 
Germany declared that if Russia should come to the assistance 
of Serbia, she would support Austria-Hungary with all the armed 
forces at her command. The last resort of an anarchic world 
was in a test of physical strength, and the most powerful of all 
the Great Powers, thoroughly possessed of the demon of milita- 
rism, was deaf to all suggestions of negotiation and compromise 
and by threats and imprecations was pushing the whole civilized 
world to that ultimate anarchic test. 

On July 28, 1914, — exactly one month after the archduke's 



18 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

assassination, — Austria-Hungary formally declared war against 
Serbia. On the next day the Russian government decreed the 
mobilization of its army. On August i, the frantic endeavors of 
various diplomatists to arrive at some peaceful solution of the 
Serbian problem were rudely arrested by the outbreak of war 
between Germany and Russia. Germany had presented a twelve- 
hour ultimatum to Russia, demanding immediate and complete 
demobilization ; Russia had refused to comply ; and Germany 
had declared war. 

The German government knew that war with Russia was likely 
to involve France. France was the sworn ally of Russia. There 
was popular feeling in France that common cause must be made 
with Russia if France were to preserve her own prestige and re- 
cover Alsace-Lorraine. Accordingly, on the very day of deliver- 
ing the ultimatum to Russia, the German government demanded 
to know within eighteen hours what would be the attitude of 
France ; if the French government should repudiate its alliance 
with Russia and promise to observe neutrality, the German am- 
bassador at Paris was instructed to demand that the powerful 
French fortress of Toul and Verdun be handed over to Germany 
for the duration of the war. Apparently the German government 
was resolved thoroughly to humiliate, if not to crush, France. 
The French government, however, gave a non-committal answer 
to the German ultimatum, and began mobilization. On August 3 
Germany declared war against France. 

Thus, within a week of the declaration of hostilities by Austria- 
Hungary against Serbia, four Great Powers were in a state of war 
— Germany and Austria-Hungary against Russia and France. 
The attitude of the other two Great Powers of Europe — Great 
Britain and Italy — did not long remain in doubt. Italy promptly 
proclaimed her neutrality, on the ground that the war waged by 
her allies was not defensive, but offensive, and that therefore she 
was not bound to give assistance to them. Great Britain, how- 
ever, appeared more hesitant. The English people certainly 
had sympathy for France and little love for Germany, and the 
British government, though liberal and pacifistic, had already in- 
formed Germany that, while their country was not formally en- 
gaged to help France or Russia, they could not promise in case 
of war to observe neutrality. By August 2, the British govern- 
ment had gone further and had announced that they would not 
tolerate German naval attacks on the unprotected western coast 
of France. And on the next day occurred an event which decided 
Great Britain to enter the war on the side of Russia and France. 



THE GREAT WAR COMES 19 

On August 2, — twenty-four hours before the formal declara- 
tion of war by Germany against France, — German troops were 
set in motion toward the French frontier, not directly against the 
strong French border fortresses of Verdun, Toul, and Belfort, but 
toward the neutral countries of Luxemburg and Belgium, which 
lay between Germany and less well-defended districts of northern 
France. Both Germany and France had signed treaties to respect 
the neutrality of these " buffer states," and France had already 
announced her intention of adhering loyally to her treaty en- 
gagements. But on August 2 German troops occupied Luxem- 
burg in spite of protests from the grand-duchess of the little state ; 
and on the same day the German government presented an ulti- 
matum to Belgium demanding within twelve hours the grant of 
permission to move German troops across that country into 
France, promising, if permission were accorded, to guarantee 
Belgian independence and integrity and to pay an indemnity, and 
threatening that, if any resistance should be encountered, Ger- 
many would treat Belgium as an enemy and that "the decision 
of arms" would determine the subsequent relations between the 
two Powers. The Belgian government characterized the ulti- 
matum as a gross violation of international law and not only 
refused categorically to grant Germany's request but appealed at 
once to Great Britain for aid in upholding the neutrality of Bel- 
gium. 

The neutrality of Belgium had long been a cardinal point in 
the foreign policy of Great Britain. The British had fought 
against Napoleon I in part because of the annexation of Belgium 
by France, and they had opposed the threatened aggression of 
Napoleon III against the little kingdom ; they were not likely to 
view with favor German attacks upon Belgium or its possible in- 
corporation into the German Empire. On August 4, therefore, 
when news was received in London that German troops had ac- 
tually crossed the border into Belgium, Sir Edward Grey, the 
British foreign secretary, dispatched an ultimatum to Germany, 
requiring assurance by midnight that Germany would respect 
Belgian neutrality. Germany refused, on the ground of "mili- 
tary necessity," and Bethmann-Hollweg, the German chancellor, 
with ^ evidence of anger and disappointment, rebuked Great 
Britain for making war for "a scrap of paper." The next day, 
Mr. Asquith, the British prime minister, announced that a state 
of war existed between Great Britain and Germany. 

On August 6, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. On 
the following day little Montenegro joined her fellow-Serb state 



20 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of Serbia against Austria-Hungary. On August 9, a state of 
war was proclaimed between Montenegro and Serbia, on one 
hand, and Germany, on the other ; on August 13, between France 
and Great Britain, on one hand, and Austria-Hungary, on the 
other. This completed the first alignment of the European 
Powers in the Great War : Germany and Austria-Hungary, on 
the one side, against Russia, France, Great Britain, Serbia, Mon- 
tenegro, and Belgium, on the other. It was speedily evident that 
the opposing combinations were fairly evenly matched in re- 
sources, in prowess, and in determination, and that the war would 
be not only terribly expensive but horribly destructive and long 
drawn out. There was no sign that either Germany or Austria- 
Hungary would consent to make peace separately ; and on the 
other side, Great Britain, France, and Russia mutually engaged 
by the Pact of London, of September, 1914, not to conclude peace 
separately nor to demand terms of peace without the previous 
agreement of each of the others. 



CHAPTER II 

GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM AND INVADES FRANCE 
MOBILIZATION AND STRATEGY 

In precipitating the Great War, the German militarists had 
dictated to the governments and the diplomatists; in waging 
it, they dictated to the nations. No European people was 
advised of the actual situation until war had been declared, and 
every popular demonstration against war was inexorably sup- 
pressed. At Berlin meetings of Social Democrats and pacinstic 
radicals were broken up, and as soon as war was proclaimed a 
most rigorous censorship of the press was enforced. So skillful 
were the German Government's pleas "that the sword had 
been thrust into its hands," so densely ignorant of the real 
facts were the bulk of the German people, so patriotic were they 
all, that there was a pathetically general and speedy acquiescence 
in the decision of the militarists. With the formal order for 
mobilization, issued in Germany on August i, 1914, crowds 
surged through the streets of Berlin cheering and singing patriotic 
songs. The war found the German nation superbly confident 
and tremendously loyal. On August 4 the Reichstag unani- 
mously passed all the necessary war bills and authorized extraor- 
dinary war credits. This time the Social Democrats joined 
with the other parties in applauding the Kaiser. 

If an aggressive Power could so instantly command the 
enthusiastic support of all its citizens, it is not surprising that 
the peoples obviously attacked should rally immediately and 
whole-heartedly to the military aid of their governments. This 
was what happened in Serbia, Russia, Belgium, and France. 
Even in Great Britain, though the resignation of three members 
of the cabinet on the eve of hostilities indicated opposition to 
entering the struggle, the appointment of Lord Kitchener as 
secretary of war and the popular|favor accompanying it subse- 
quently signalized the triumph of the war-spirit. From German 
sources emanated reports that a serious pacifist and Laborite 
resistance was being encountered by the British government ; 



22 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

on the contrary, a statement issued by representatives of all 
sections of the labor movement in October, 1914, pledged the 
loyal support of the British working classes for the war against 
German militarism, since the victory of the German army 
" would mean the death of democracy in Europe." All the 
independent peoples of Europe were loyal to their several Govern- 
ments. Truly the Great War was to be a War of the Nations. 

Before military opera tions could be inaugurated on a large 
scale in any theater of the war, the millions of men composing 
the " citizen armies" of the various Continental belligerents 
had to be collected, equipped, and sent to the front, that is 
"mobilized." In time of peace each nation had troops scattered 
in towns and camps all over the country. Take Germany for 
example. Germany's standing, or "peace," army was composed 
of about 800,000 officers and men, organized in twenty-five army 
corps. On a peace footing, an army corps numbered about 
20,000. For war each army corps was raised to a strength of 
about 43,000 men by the inclusion of "active reserves," i.e. 
men who had recently served and were still under twenty-eight 
years of age. This gave Germany a field army of over 1,100,000 
young trained men. Next, the Landwehr or second line, con- 
sisting of trained men between twenty-eight and thirty-nine 
years of age, was called up to reenforce the first line. The 
Landwehr numbered about 2,200,000. The third line or Land- 
sturm included 600,000 trained men of middle age, who would 
be called upon for special aid behind the front and for defense 
against invasion. In addition Germany had at least 500,000 
able-bodied men of military age who had been excused from 
regular military service and could be used in case of war to replace 
the wounded and killed. Thus there were military forces in 
Germany, already trained, amounting to 4,400,000, and of the 
untrained enough more potential soldiers to bring up the grand 
total to nearly seven million men. War, therefore, meant 
military service for some member of almost every family. 

The word of mobilization, flashed by telegraph to every corner 
of the German Empire on August 1 , brought the active reserves 
to the appointed mobilizing center of each army corps. Some 
German corps were mobilized at frontier towns, such as Strass- 
burg, Metz, Saarburg, and Coblenz. Others had to be trans- 
ported by rail from the interior. The immensity of this move- 
ment may be faintly appreciated when one considers that an 
army corps required more than one hundred trains, each com- 
posed of fifty-five cars, for its transportation. Guns, rations, 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 23 

ammunition, artillery, clothing, hospital supplies, trucks, and 
horses went with the troops. In many cases the rations and 
horses had to be purchased from farmers at the beginning of 
mobilization, and motor trucks and clothing from merchants. 
The whole railway system was operated by military authorities 
on a special schedule calculated to bring the troops to the front 
in the shortest possible time. The huge national army was a 
perfect mechanism whose delicate adjustments might be thrown 
into fatal confusion by the blunder of one stupid official or the 
delay of one special train. Travelers who witnessed the Ger- 
man armies concentrating on the French frontier affirm that 
the marvelous German mobilization progressed with the precision 
of clockwork. 

In France, in Austria-Hungary, and in Russia, mobilization 
was slower and less perfect in its appointments. But most 
reports confirm the impression that both the French and the 
Russian armies were put in the field with greater celerity and 
with far less confusion than could have been expected. Great 
Britain, alone of the belligerents, did not have the general com- 
pulsory military service, but her small standing army of 250,000 
men was already in a state of high efficiency and preparedness ; 
a hundred thousand volunteers appeared in a day or two ; another 
army of half a million was recruited with little difficulty ; and 
it was estimated that Britain, with her colonies and dependencies, 
could within three years send four million men to the theater 
of war. 

No less perfect than the organization and movement of the 
enormous armies was the equipment with which they fought. 
The Great War was to be a war of machines, waged with the 
help of every deadly device science could invent. A feature 
of the conflict in the Franco-Belgian theater was the new Krupp 
1 1 -inch howitzer, 1 weighing about seven tons, hauled by power- 
ful motors, and capable of throwing an n -inch shell at any 
object within a radius of five miles. But the surpassing achieve- 
ment of the Krupp gun-factory at Essen in the early stage of 
the war was the production of a 16-inch (4 2 -centimeter) siege- 
piece which could be transported by rail and readily emplaced 
on a concrete foundation. From this mortar, discharged by 
electricity, a shell one meter in length, weighing almost a ton, 
and filled with high explosives, could be hurled some fifteen miles. 

X A "gun" throws its projectile in almost a straight line; a "howitzer" dis- 
charges its shell at an angle of elevation varying from fifteen to forty-five degrees ; 
a "mortar" is fired at a still greater angle of elevation, the object being to drop a 
shell on the top of a fortification or behind the earthworks of the enemy. 



24 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

In the field much smaller guns were ordinarily used. The 
German army employed a three-inch gun capable of throwing 
twenty 15 -pound shells a minute at an enemy three miles away. 
The French field gun (the famous "75") was of slightly smaller 
bore than the German, but of greater power and weight. Ma- 
chine guns were used on both sides with telling effect. A ma- 
chine gun is light enough to be packed on the back of a horse 
or drawn on a light carriage ; it fires from five hundred to seven 
hundred shots a minute. The regular arm of the infantry was, 
of course, the rifle, tipped with the bayonet for hand-to-hand 
encounters ; of the various makes, the German Mauser possessed 
the greatest muzzle velocity, although the French Lebel had a 
longer effective range. 

Airplanes, whose value in warfare had long been discussed, 
now rendered priceless service, not only for general reconnaissance 
but also in locating the hostile force so that the artillery officers 
could instruct their gunners at what angle to fire at the unseen 
enemy. Even more important than the airplane was the automo- 
bile. Motor cars incased in steel and armed with rapid-fire 
guns accompanied the German cavalry on its swift advance. 
Speedy automobiles and motorcycles were invaluable for com- 
munication where telephone, telegraph, or airplane was not 
available. Enormous motor trucks, often provided with mon- 
ster searchlights, were ceaselessly employed in conveying incal- 
culable quantities of foodstuffs. 

The Great War originated as a struggle on the part of Austria- 
Hungary and Germany against the "Slavic Peril," against the 
great Slav empire of Russia and the small Slav kingdoms of 
Serbia and Montenegro. But from the very beginning of hos- 
tilities, Teutonic defense against Russia was of minor interest 
as compared with the attack on Belgium and France. The reason 
was quite simple. The German General Staff had planned to 
hurl the bulk of the German army first against France and then, 
having crushed France, to transfer it to the east to turn back 
the tide of Russia's slow-mobilizing multitudes. For Russia, 
with all her 180 millions of inhabitants in Europe and in Asia, 
was spread over so vast an area and was so deficient in railways 
that ten of her thirty-six army corps could not arrive on the scene 
within two months, and the remaining twenty-six were not 
expected to begin a serious attack within the first few weeks. 
of the war. Germany would leave a small force of her own to 
cooperate with Austro-Hungarian armies in holding back the 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 25 

Russian advance-guard, while with the rest she would overwhelm 
France. The German armies in the west would sweep across 
Belgium — with its network of convenient railways and smooth 
highways — turning the flank of the strong line of French forti- 
fications along the Franco-German frontier, and swoop down 
upon Paris with irresistible might. The French army anni- 
hilated, the German troops could be shifted from the west to 
the east (it is less than 600 miles from Belgium to Russia, that 
is, about the distance from New York to Cleveland), and reserves 
could be brought up to defeat the oncoming Russians. 

The French plan of defense had originally been based on the 
assumption that the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg would 
be respected. To appreciate the importance of the neutrality 
of these "buffer" states, one needs only to observe that with 
Belgium and Luxemburg neutral, approximately half of the 
northern frontier of France was immune from attack. The 
eastern half of that frontier, from Luxemburg to Switzerland, 
was defended by the Vosges mountains and by a line of for- 
tified towns from Verdun through Toul and Epinal to Belfort. 
French mobilization, moreover, was directed so as to place 
the main strength of the French army in the trenches and 
forts along the Franco-German frontier proper, if not actually 
to take the offensive in this region. If the Germans endeav- 
ored to strike into France from Lorraine, they would encounter 
the bulk of the French army intrenched along a strong line of 
defense. 

As events proved, the German military authorities had deter- 
mined to deliver the chief attack not from Lorraine but from 
Belgium and Luxemburg. By adopting this course, Germany 
brought 150,000 Belgians into the field as enemies and three 
British army corps whom Lord Kitchener dispatched as an 
Expeditionary Force to aid the French and Belgians. But the 
immediate advantages to be gained were considered more im- 
portant by the Germans than the addition of 300,000 soldiers 
to the enemy's ranks. The Belgian forces were of the nature of 
militia rather than of a perfect military machine ; and the small 
British Expeditionary Force — all that un-military Great Britain 
could at that time put in the field — was referred to by the 
Kaiser as a "contemptible little army." As yet the Germans 
had formed no idea of the dogged determination and enormous 
resources of the British, and they failed utterly to comprehend 
the strength of the moral indignation with which the whole world 
would view the violation of Belgium's neutrality. It was the 



26 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

price they must pay for intrusting all decisions to the militarists 
and for basing all actions on " military necessity." 

Meanwhile the attack on France by way of Belgium appealed 
irresistibly to the German military mind. In the first place, 
through Belgium and Luxemburg, German armies would have 
two natural routes leading into the heart of France. The 
northern route, leading from the German military bases at 
Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle through Liege, Namur, and Mau- 
beuge, was that of the main railway between Berlin and Paris ; 
the network of roads and railways in Belgium and northern 
France would facilitate the transportation of troops and sup- 
plies, and the comparatively level country would admit of the 
extensive use of the famous Krupp howitzers. The other route 
followed the Moselle valley from the German base of Coblenz 
on the Rhine through Trier up to Luxemburg and thence entered 
France at Longwy and passed south to Verdun. 

In the second place, the French did not possess such formidable 
defenses along the frontier opposite Belgium and Luxemburg 
as those opposite Lorraine and Alsace : Dunkirk, Lille, and 
Maubeuge could not compare with Verdun, Toul, Epinal, and 
Belfort. In the third place, the use of routes through the 
"buffer" states would enable the German General Staff to put 
its entire effective forces immediately in the field and to use 
them in decisive flanking movements rather than in protracted 
frontal attacks. Finally, and perhaps this was the most impor- 
tant consideration, a swift incursion of German armies by way 
of Belgium and Luxemburg would compel the French army to 
change the front of its mobilization from the Lorraine frontier 
to the Belgian ; and in attempting to re-form its lines the French 
army might conceivably be thrown into such confusion and 
disorder that a gigantic victory — a Sedan on a colossal scale — 
might be won by the Germans. This was the supreme purpose 
of German strategy, to demoralize and break up the French 
field army. Paris could be taken later. 

The nineteen army corps which Germany had immediately 
available for the invasion of France were grouped in seven 
great armies ; three were detailed to cut a swath through cen- 
tral Belgium, past Maubeuge, and down the Oise; two were 
sent through Luxemburg and southeastern Belgium (Belgian 
Luxemburg) ; and two were stationed in Alsace-Lorraine. The 
seven main armies were: (i) General von Kluck's army, north 
of the Meuse ; (2) General von Billow's, south of the Meuse ; 
(3) General von Hausen's, directed against Givet ; (4) Duke 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 27 

Albert of Wurttemberg's, directed against southeastern Belgium ; 
(5) the Prussian Crown Prince's, occupying Luxemburg; (6) 
the Bavarian Crown Prince's, based on Metz ; (7) General von 
Heeringen's, based on Strassburg. It seemed a happy omen 
that over all these armies the supreme German commander, 
the chief of the General Staff, was Helmuth von Moltke, a nephew 
of that illustrious Moltke who had overwhelmed France in 1870. 
A detachment of the first army was intrusted to General von 
Emmich for the immediate task of seizing Liege. 

THE CONQUEST OF BELGIUM 

From the German frontier, opposite Aix-la-Chapelle, to the 
gap of the Oise, on the Franco-Belgian frontier, it would be six 
days' march for an unresisted German army. But the Belgians 
were unanimously and heroically determined to resist Germany's 
outrageous violation of their country's neutrality. In the face 
of national disaster, and in an unparalleled outburst of national 
patriotism, even the most fundamental party differences and 
social distinctions were swept aside. "Irreconcilable" Socialists 
sprang to the support of their plucky King ; and the Socialist 
leader, Emile Vandervelde, entered the Catholic cabinet on 
August 4. Belgium had nothing to gain from the war ; she was 
resolved that it should not take from her the most priceless 
treasure of her plighted word and national honor. 

Situated just across the Belgian frontier and directly in the 
path of the German advance from Cologne up the valley of the 
Meuse was the strongly fortified city of Liege. Against Liege 
the detachment of General von Emmich struck on August 4. 
So anxious were the German military authorities not to lose time, 
that Emmich recklessly sacrificed his men in futile attempts 
to carry the city by assault. Compact masses of German sol- 
diery were hurled against the Belgian forts, only to be mowed 
down by murderous artillery fire or annihilated by exploding 
mines. Assault failing, Emmich brought up giant 42-centi- 
meter howitzers which speedily demolished some of the forts 
encircling the city and enabled the Germans to enter the town 
on August 7. It was not until eight days later, however, that 
the last of the encircling forts was silenced. 

After the fall of Liege, the German cavalry swept over the 
neighboring country and the German armies penetrated Bel- 
gium. Constant skirmishing marked the retirement of the main 
Belgian force to its principal line of defense at Louvain. There, 



28 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

on August 19, the Belgian army made its last important stand 
against overwhelming odds, was defeated, and the greater part 
of it was driven back in a northwesterly direction on Malines 
and Antwerp. General von Kluck, after dispatching a force 
to press the retreat of the Belgians northward, entered Brussels 
on August 20, and then, with the principal part of his army, 
swung southward in the direction of Mons and Maubeuge. 
Meanwhile, the armies of General von Hausen and Duke Albert 
of Wiirttemberg were striking into the hilly country of the Ar- 
dennes in southeastern Belgium ; and between the forces of 
Kluck and Hausen, General von Biilow was pursuing a small 
Belgian detachment up the Meuse to the fortress of Namur. 
On August 22 Namur succumbed to Billow's siege howitzers, 
and the way was at length cleared for a German invasion of 
France. Belgian resistance had meant that the German march 
across Belgium had taken eighteen days instead of six and that 
both the French and the British had been given a longer respite 
in which to prepare their defense. 

The French were unable to come to the immediate assistance 
of the Belgians, because their mobilization, as the enemy an- 
ticipated, was proceeding along the Franco- German frontier 
proper, and General Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, 
was unwilling to risk too sudden a disarrangement of his plans. 
As some relief to the hard-pressed Belgians, however, General 
Joffre ordered a counter-offensive against Alsace-Lorraine. 
In the extreme south, an army stepped over into Alsace at Alt- 
kirch, carried the German trenches there on August 7, and on 
the next day occupied the city of Miilhausen. Driven out, 
the French reentered Miilhausen on August 19. General Paul 
Pau was in actual charge of this invasion of Alsace and was 
hailed as a liberator by a large part of the population, which 
had never ceased to long for reunion with France, although 
more than a generation had passed since Alsace-Lorraine was 
appropriated by German conquerors. General Pau's forces 
penetrated as fai north as Colmar. 

Simultaneously other troops mastered the difficult passes of 
the Vosges mountains and descended from the west into the 
Alsatian valleys. Further north, General Castelnau with five 
army corps invaded Lorraine, and took Saarburg on August 
18. But here the French advance was halted. With slower 
mobilization, Joffre was unable to reenforce the army corps in 
Alsace-Lorraine and at the same time to take needful measures 
of precaution against the rapidly growing German menace from 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 29 

Belgium and Luxemburg. French armies had to be moved up 
to face the Duke of Wurttemberg and the Prussian Crown Prince 
in the region of the forest of the Ardennes in southeastern Bel- 
gium. Another French army, under General Lanrezac, had to 
be dispatched to the Belgian border, for the two or three British 
corps which had been hurried to France and which by August 
21 had managed to take up a defensive position north of Mau- 
beuge on a line from Conde in France to Mons in Belgium, 
were far too few to make a decisive stand against the German 
hordes ; General Lanrezac took position, on the British right 
flank, in the angle formed between the Sambre and Meuse rivers 
south of Namur. 

In the four days, August 20-23, the- advanced Franco-British 
lines made an unsuccessful attempt to stay the German conquest 
of Belgium, and the French counter-offensive in Alsace-Lorraine 
definitely failed. In Lorraine, General Castelnau's invading 
army was attacked from three sides at once by General von 
Heeringen, the Bavarian Crown Prince, and garrison forces 
from Metz. For the first time under fire, one French corps 
suddenly gave way, and Castelnau was able to extricate his 
defeated army only with the greatest difficulty. He now took 
the defensive before Nancy. In southern Alsace, the French 
invaders were compelled to retreat as rapidly as they had ad- 
vanced and to abandon nearly all the ground they had won. 
The French counter-offensive had been politically advantageous 
in that it had strengthened French morale and had stirred up 
all France to seek the reconquest of the "lost provinces," but 
from a strictly military standpoint it had been unsuccessful if 
not disastrous. 

There remained the principal business of giving aid to the hard- 
pressed Belgians and of checking the flood of German invasion 
before it had rolled quite to the French frontier. On August 
20, with the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force under 
Field Marshal Sir John French and with the posting of a French 
army south of Namur and of two other French armies in the 
Ardennes, General Joffre gave orders for an offensive. 

On the next two days the French offensive in southeastern 
Belgium broke down completely. "There were imprudences; 
committed under German fire, divisions ill-engaged, rash deploy- 
ments, a premature waste of men, and a notable incompetence 
of certain French troops and their commanders." x The French 
were soon in precipitate retreat from the Ardennes toward Sedan, 

1 From the French official report. 



30 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Montmedy, and Longwy, across the border. To the west, the 
Allies still had a chance of success if General Lanrezac's army 
and the British could obtain a decisive result. 

This was unfortunately not the case. General Lanrezac's 
right flank was too exposed as a result of the French retirement 
from the Ardennes, and by the fall of Namur on August 22 he 
was exposed to the powerful blows of Billow's army. After a 
savage struggle at Charleroi on August 22-23, he retired up the 
Meuse to the French border towns of Givet and Maubeuge. 
Now the British army was endangered : it lacked support on 
its right, and in front and on the left appeared four German 
army corps. Obviously General von Kluck intended to over- 
whelm the two British corps and turn the flank of the allied 
line. Unwilling to be either outflanked or overwhelmed, General 
French abandoned his precarious position after a hot contest 
at Mons, August 23-24, and conducted a hasty retreat — an 
orderly flight, one might say — back into France. Trenches 
had been prepared at the line Cambrai-Le Cateau-Landrecies ; 
but the continued pressure of Kluck's superior numbers forced 
the British to continue their flight. In six days' retreat, hotly 
pursued by Kluck's cavalry and armored motor cars, struggling 
desperately to prevent its artillery and supplies from falling 
into the enemy's hands, the little British army lost 230 officers 
and 13,413 men. 

Most of Belgium was conquered by the Germans and the route 
to France was now cleared. 

THE INVASION OF FRANCE 

The sensational retreat of Sir John French from Belgium 
far back into France should be regarded as but one detail of the 
general strategic retreat ordered by General Joffre after the 
French defeats of August 20-23. The fate of the whole French 
army depended upon avoiding a decisive battle until the French 
forces could be concentrated upon an advantageous battle-line 
and could confront the Germans with equal or superior numbers. 
It would have been folly to rush troops northward to sure defeat. 
General Joffre, therefore, ordered a strategic retreat southward. 

Into France poured the German armies. Occasionally they 
were obstructed for a few hours by a fortress-garrison or by the 
allies' turning at bay in order to save the retreat from becoming 
a rout. Past the border towns of Lille, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, 
Mezieres, Montmedy, and Longwy swept the German forces 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 31 

down over northern France. By September 2 the invasion had 
progressed far. General von Kluck s army had passed Com- 
piegne; General von Blilow had reached Laon ; General von 
Hausen had crossed the Aisne near Attigny ; the duke of Wtirt- 
temberg and the Prussian Crown Prince had advanced to the 
upper Aisne and taken positions between Vouziers and Verdun ; 
to the east, the sixth and seventh^ German armies faced the 
French fortresses of Verdun, Toul, Epinal, and Belfort. 

Hastily the French government-offices were removed from 
Paris to Bordeaux ; General Gallieni began to prepare the metrop- 
olis for siege ; and as General von Kluck, on the extreme German 
right, swiftly pursued the British and a newly organized French 
army southward, until the din of battle could be heard by the 
Parisians, the prediction seemed about to be verified that the 
Germans would be in Paris six weeks after the declaration of 
war. By September 5, though the eastern fortresses of France 
were still holding, the Germans were threatening them from the 
rear and were already in possession of St. Menehould, Chalons, 
and Esternay. 

After their long and exhausting retreat the French armies 
stood with their left resting on Paris, their right holding Verdun, 
and their center sagging south of the Marne. In reality Verdun 
was a central salient extending far into the German lines rather 
than the extreme right of the French lines, for in the east French 
and German armies faced each other from Verdun to the Swiss 
border in a line almost at right angles with the Paris- Verdun 
line. The French armies had now reached the ultimate points 
of retreat; for the first time they and the British army were 
in touch with one another all along the line ; and on September 
5 General Joffre issued his famous order for commencing the 
battle of the Marne. "The hour has come," he wrote, "to 
advance at all costs, and to die where you stand rather than 
give way." 

^ On the eve of the battle of the Marne, the German General 
Staff was preparing to deliver a crushing blow against the French 
armies. On the extreme right of the German line, General 
Kluck had suddenly swerved from north of Paris toward the 
southeast and was marching on Meaux and Coulommiers. Ob- 
viously it was planned for him to cooperate with Generals Biilow 
and Hausen in concentrating the force of a gigantic and decisive 
blow against the center of the Paris- Verdun allied line, between 
Sezanne and Vitry-le-Francois. If the Germans could break 
through the center, the French armies would be separated ; those 



32 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

in the west might be driven into Paris and obliged in time to 
surrender, while those in the east would be ground to pieces on 
the Verdun-Belfort line of fortresses between the armies of the 
Prussian Crown Prince, and the Bavarian Crown Prince, and 
General von Heeringen. 

The French center stood firm against the German onset, 
however, and the battle of the Marne, September 6-12, marked 
the culmination and the decline of the German invasion. As a 
matter of fact, the "battle of the Marne" is merely a conven- 
tional name to designate a whole series of desperate battles 
that were waged almost simultaneously along the entire line from 
Paris to Belfort. On the extreme west of the line a brilliant 
manceuver of the allies led to a serious German reverse. Here 
a newly organized French army under General Maunoury, 
moving out eastward from Paris, fell upon the right of Kluck's 
exposed forces. Turning west to confront these new assailants, 
Kluck was attacked from the south by Sir John French's British 
army and from the southeast by a French army under General 
Franchet d'Esperey. By dint of desperate fighting he escaped 
from the jaws of the Anglo-French trap and gradually shifted 
his army northwards to shake off the French forces which clung 
to his right flank. The harder Kluck was pressed, the fiercer 
were the attacks which the Germans directed at the French 
center, particularly in the neighborhood of Sezanne and Fere- 
Champenoise. Here was the most critical position, and here 
was the most furious fighting. That the French were able 
at this crucial point not only to hold their own but to force the 
Germans back was due to the heroism and elan of the common 
soldiers and to the remarkable military genius of their com- 
manding officer, General Ferdinand Foch. Foch's brilliant 
qualities were supremely tested at Fere-Champenoise. With- 
out his army and his generalship, the battle of the Marne might 
have been a signal disaster to France. 

Even the allied manceuver against Kluck and the success of 
Foch might not have availed the French in the extended battle 
of the Marne if the Germans had been able in the east to turn 
the line of French fortresses extending from Verdun to Belfort. 
The Germans did their best to turn this line. While the armies 
of the Bavarian Crown Prince and General von Heeringen en- 
deavored to batter the fortifications from the direction of Lor- 
raine and Alsace, the Prussian Crown Prince was struggling to 
penetrate south through the region of the Argonne, between 
Verdun and the rest of France, and thereby to complete, from 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 33 

the west, the surrounding of the fortified line. The fate that 
had already overtaken Liege, Namur, and the fortresses of 
northern France made the French properly apprehensive of 
trusting to the protection of forts against heavy German artillery. 
The French understood that the defense of Verdun and the 
other eastern fortresses would have to be undertaken in the field. 
Thus it transpired that, at the very moment when at the west 
Kluck was being forced back and in the center Foch was valiantly 
gaining ground, French armies were fighting equally decisive 
battles in the Argonne and before Nancy. In the Argonne, 
General Sarrail finally stopped the advance of the Prussian 
Crown Prince. Before Nancy, General Castelnau, with superb 
tenacity, held his position against the superior numbers of the 
easternmost German armies and even forced them back to the 
Vosges mountains. 

Against the solid wall of French resistance, German attacks 
were everywhere unavailing. Everywhere the French advanced : 
they recrossed the Marne ; they retook Chalons and Rheims ; 
they were not halted until they had reached the Aisne and had 
delivered the eastern fortresses from immediate danger. 

Such was the seven days' battle of the Marne, in which more 
than two millions of men were engaged. It was won by troops 
who for two weeks had been retreating and who had to meet 
practically the whole German army. In spite of the fatigue of 
the allied forces, in spite of the German heavy artillery, the vic- 
torious armies captured an enormous quantity of supplies and 
thousands of prisoners. The battle of the Marne completely 
upset the strategy of the German General Staff. It signified 
that while France might be invaded, France was not to be 
crushed and conquered. 

When the French and British pushed north after the battle 
of the Marne, they were halted abruptly on September 12 at 
the Aisne. It was soon clear that the Germans were not simply 
pausing in their retreat but were occupying a battle-line of great 
natural strength, prepared with trenches for infantry and with 
concrete foundations for the big German guns. From the hills 
of Noyon, just north of where the Aisne flows into the Oise, 
the line followed the heights on the northern bank of the Aisne 
as far as Berry-au-Bac and then, leaving the Aisne, it bent south- 
ward almost to Rheims and extended across the forested ridge 
of the Argonne to the region of Verdun. A French drive was 
directed northward against Laon ; a German drive, southward 
against Rheims. Both were checked. After an excessively 



34 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



vigorous and destructive bombardment of Rheims on September 
19-20, the battle along the Aisne practically came to a close, 
although the opposing armies viewed each other fiercely from 
their parallel lines of trenches. 

While the armies in the center were coming to a deadlock, 
events of great interest were transpiring on both wings. On 
the east, the Prussian Crown Prince sent large forces to cut in 




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south of Verdun. The Germans had already reduced the fort 
of Troyon, just south of Verdun, and had reached St. Mihiel, 
a little further south on the Meuse, thus threatening to surround 
Verdun, when the French reenforced their line at this point. St. 
Mihiel continued, however, to be an additional outer defense for 
Metz and a possible starting point for a strong German offensive. 
In upper Alsace the French managed to cling to the town of 
Thann as a base for further operations in the "lost provinces." 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 35 

On the west of the long battle-line, the Germans and the 
French engaged in a "race to the sea." French troops were 
hurried northward by way of Amiens in the hope of enveloping 
the right wing of General von Kluck's army, and German troops 
were hastily marched northward to frustrate the French flanking 
movement. The net result was the extension of the battle-line, 
almost at right angles with the Aisne sector, from Noyon to 
Flanders and the Channel coast. The Germans possessed them- 
selves of Cambrai, Douai, and Lille ; the French saved Amiens, 
Arras, Ypres, and Dunkirk. 

Since the last days of August the small Belgian army had 
been annoying the Germans by occasionally sallying forth from 
its positions at Malines and Antwerp. So long as these cities 
remained in Belgian hands, they constituted potential points 
of support for a large Franco-British expedition which might be 
landed on the northern Belgian coast and thence harass the 
rear of the German line. On September 27 the Germans bom- 
barded and occupied Malines, and on the following day began 
in earnest to attack the supposedly impregnable stronghold of 
Antwerp. A small force of British and French bluejackets 
was sent to the aid of the defenders, but too small to be of any 
avail. The German artillery pounded the Belgian fortifications 
to bits. During the night of October 8 the allied forces forsook 
the doomed city, and on the following day the Germans entered 
in triumph. The survivors of the heroic little Belgian army 
were transferred to the extreme left flank of the allied line in 
Flanders. 

Had the Allies been able to retain Antwerp, they might con- 
ceivably have stretched their long line in a northeasterly direc- 
tion from Ypres past Ghent to the stronghold of Antwerp itself 
and thereby have retained the whole Belgian coast and been 
in a strategically favorable position from which to launch a 
huge offensive against the Germans. The sorry loss of Antwerp 
was due in part to mismanagement on the part of the British 
authorities in London, and in greater part to the hard, cold 
fact that the Allies were not prepared either in men or in equip- 
ment for such an extension of their battle-line as the retention 
of Antwerp would involve. As it was, the Germans were enabled 
not only to occupy Antwerp but also to appropriate Ghent, 
Bruges, and the coast towns of Zeebrugge and Ostend. 

German possession of coast towns would menace England 
by providing bases for submarines and perhaps by cutting Eng- 
land's communications with France. For these reasons the 



36 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Germans desired to capture the French towns of Dunkirk, 
Calais, and Boulogne, as well as the Belgian ports of Zeebrugge 
and Ostend. Consequently, as soon as they had taken Ant- 
werp, they massed three armies under the duke of Wurttemberg, 
the Bavarian Crown Prince, and General von Biilow, respec- 
tively, for a drive towards the Straits of Dover. In the last 
week of October, almost simultaneously, these armies furiously 
assailed the Allied line along the Yser, at Ypres, at La Bassee, 
and before Arras. The terrific battle of Flanders was on. At 
first the brunt of the conflict was borne by the battered Bel- 
gian army, which held Duke Aloert of Wurttemberg back of 
the Yser until British warships could draw into range and open 
fire with their heavy guns, forcing the Germans to desist. Further 
inland, between Nieuport and Ypres, the German advance was 
checked, after other means had failed, by the desperate expedient 
of cutting the dikes and flooding the country. The town of 
Dixmude, in this region, was finally won by the Germans. 
Further south, the Bavarian Crown Prince managed after five 
days' intense righting to advance the few miles from La Bassee 
to Neuve Chapelle, but no nearer the coast could he go. Still 
further south General von Biilow drove hard against Arras, 
but the French, under General Maud'huy, held their ground 
most tenaciously. Near Ypres, however, the Germans delivered 
their most savage and protracted assaults. The brave British 
army, reenforced by colonials and French troops, was beaten 
back a little, but its line was not broken. The Germans' effort 
to reach the Channel ports was as much a failure in October 
and November as had been their attempt to smash the whole 
French army in August and September. 

By the middle of November, the battle of Flanders, like the 
battle of the Aisne, had lost its fury and become a dreary process 
of trench-digging with intermittent cannonading. Here and 
there a few hundred yards could be gained by one side or the 
other by hurling masses of infantry at the opposing trenches, 
but for such sacrifice the strategic gain was small. The rigors 
of winter, moreover, now added to the sufferings of the soldiers, 
who had to settle down in trenches filled with mud and water 
if not with ice and snow. 

The battle-line established after the struggles on the Aisne 
and in Flanders extended some six hundred miles from the coast 
of the Channel to the border of Switzerland ; of this long line 
the Belgians at the close of 1914 held about eighteen miles and 
the British about thirty-one, while the French armies, two and 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 



37 



a half millions strong, defended the remaining 543 miles. By 
this time the line had become almost stationary, and was so 



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formidably intrenched and fortified that it could not possibly 
be broken excepjt at a terrible cost of life and with an enormous 
expenditure of shells. 

GERMAN GAINS IN THE WEST — AND FAILURE 

What had the Germans gained by their attack upon Belgium 
and France ? In the first place, they were in military occupation 
of the whole kingdom of Belgium except a tiny strip in the south- 
west corner extending from Nieuport to Ypres. The Belgian 
government was exiled to Havre in France, and the Belgian people 
were ruled by a German military governor at Brussels. To the 
already great industrial resources of Germany were now added 
those of Belgium, and by forced levies the conquerors obtained 
goods and money from the vanquished as aids to the prosecution 
of the war. The invasion of Belgium, however, had contributed 
directly to bringing Great Britain into the war, and the horrors 
amid which the conquest of Belgium was consummated aroused 
the liveliest enmity of the whole Belgian people and the keenest 
sympathy of neutral nations as well as of the Allies. The Ger- 
mans had won Belgian territory but no Belgian hearts. 

A large part of the city of Lou vain, including the famous 



38 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Catholic university and church of St. Peter, was, deliberately- 
razed by the Germans, because, said the German official report, 
the civilian population had concerted an attack on the German 
troops which occupied the town. The vandalism at Louvain 
especially shocked the consciences of civilized men, but it was 
only one of numerous similar instances where towns or villages 
had been ruthlessly burned and many of their inhabitants shot 
or outraged. The spirit which prompted these acts may be 
judged by an extract from the proclamation of General von 
Billow to the citizens of Liege : "The inhabitants of the town of 
Ardennes, after having declared their peaceful intentions, have 
made a surprise attack on our troops. It is with my approval 
that the commander has ordered the whole town to be burned 
and that about a hundred persons have been shot. I bring 
this to the knowledge of the city of Liege so that its citizens may 
realize the fate with which they are menaced if they adopt a 
similar attitude." In the town of Wavre, the German general 
demanded a war levy of three million francs as a fine for the 
resistance offered by the inhabitants, and threatened: "The 
town will be burned and utterly destroyed if the levy is not paid 
in due time, without regard for anyone ; the innocent will suffer 
with the guilty." This was precisely the most distressing cir- 
cumstance, that the innocent were made to suffer with the 
guilty. Evidence collected on oath by French and British com- 
missions of inquiry tended to show that in countless cases the 
worst horrors of war had been inflicted on innocent women and 
children. For instance, at Sommeilles, which was burned by 
the Germans on September 6, two women, and four children 
aged respectively eleven, five, four, and one, were afterwards 
discovered lying in a pool of blood in a cellar where they had 
been cruelly butchered. For such heinous crimes, for such 
violation of international law and common decency, the Ger- 
mans offered the curious pleas of "military necessity" and "war 
is war. " 

Against German perfidy and German " f rightfulness, " the 
Belgians found a courageous and able advocate in Cardinal 
Mercier, archbishop of M alines and primate of the Catholic 
Church in Belgium. He was indefatigable in protesting against 
the German conquest, in comforting his compatriots, and in 
appealing to the Vatican and foreign Powers for aid. In vain 
the German administration sought to silence him or to nullify 
his efforts. In a famous pastoral letter addressed to his priests 
on Christmas Day, 1914, the venerable prelate wrote: "I have 



GERMANY CONQUERS BELGIUM 39 

traversed the greater part of the districts most terribly devastated 
in my diocese, and the ruins I beheld, and the ashes, were more 
dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest forebodings, could 
have imagined. . . . Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, 
convents, in great numbers, are in ruins. Entire villages have 
all but disappeared. . . . God will save Belgium, my brethren, 
ye cannot doubt it. Nay rather, He is saving her. ... Is 
there a patriot among us who does not know that Belgium has 
grown great? Which of us would have the courage to tear out 
this last page of our national history? Which of us does not 
exult in the brightness of the glory of this shattered nation?" 

To the eloquent words of Cardinal Mercier should be added 
the work of the special commission dispatched by the Belgian 
government from Havre to the United States and the active 
Belgian propaganda carried on in England. The wrongs done 
Belgium were ceaselessly reviewed. One noteworthy result 
was the organization of relief, chiefly under American auspices ; 
for two years and a half, Mr. Brand Whitlock, the United States 
minister at Brussels, cooperated with various Belgian and foreign 
societies, in attempting to lessen the misery and suffering of 
millions of men and women in Belgium. Another result was 
the increasing fervor of the British in prosecuting the war. 
The " assassination of Belgium " became one of the most effective 
aids to Lord Kitchener in securing volunteers for his armies. 
The British Expeditionary Force, which in August, 1914, 
amounted to but 150,000, was thenceforth steadily augmented' 
until by April, 191 5, it numbered at least 750,000, to say nothing 
of colonial troops that were arriving from Canada, Australia, 
New Zealand, and even India. 

What had the Germans gained ? In the first place, they had 
gained Belgium — but also the hatred of the Belgian people, 
the ever greater and more determined hostility of the British 
at home and overseas, and the suspicion and horror of nearly 
the whole world. Incidentally, they had opened up a more 
strategically suitable route for their major attack upon France. 
In the second place, they had invaded France and possessed 
themselves of a fairly large strip of northern French territory, 
including the populous towns of Lille, St. Quentin, Douai, Valen- 
ciennes, Maubeuge, Sedan, Montmedy, Vervins, and Laon. 
Though the occupied territory constituted only about one-twen- 
tieth of the total area of European France, it was a fraction which, 
because of its industrial and mining wealth, was of great impor- 
tance for the successful conduct of the war. It included ninety 



40 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

per cent, of France's iron ore, eighty per cent, of her iron and 
steel manufactures, and seventy per cent, of her coal resources. 
Despite this serious handicap, however, France was not crushed. 
Her armies were intact. Her government had returned from 
Bordeaux to Paris in December, 19 14. Her national spirit 
was quickened. Her confidence in ultimate victory was superb. 
The strategy of the German General Staff on the Western Front 
had failed. The Germans had not attained their objectives. 

The invasion of France in the late summer of 19 14 had exposed 
a momentous fallacy. The belief that before the terrific on- 
slaught of the German armies, with their swift mobilization, 
their unrivaled discipline, and their ponderous howitzers, the 
French people would prove themselves cowardly, decadent, and 
excitable, and the armed resistance of France would wither and 
crumple up, was definitely relegated to the realm of fancy by 
the absolutely calm and heroic conduct of the French during the 
crisis and by the battle of the Marne. The magnificent holding 
battle fought by the French along the line from Paris to Verdun, 
after a long and discouraging retreat, effectually dispelled the 
illusion that the swift Prussian victory over France in 1870 
could be repeated in 19 14. That the omens had fickly changed 
was evidenced in the autumn of 1914 by the supersession of 
Helmuth von Moltke as Chief of the German General Staff by 
Erich von Falkenhayn, the Prussian minister of war. 

The German General Staff had planned to overcome France 
•quickly and then turn its whole force against Russia. Unable 
to overcome France, what would it do with Russia ? 



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CHAPTER III 

RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 

THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF EAST PRUSSIA 

One significant effect of the German failure speedily to crush 
France was the inability of the German General Staff to transfer 
its main forces from the west to the east before the first Russian 
armies had been mobilized. As a matter of fact the mobiliza- 
tion .of the Russian "hordes" proceeded practically unhindered 
and with unexpected rapidity. By the third week of August, 
some' two million Russian soldiers were under arms; and of 
the twenty-six Russian army corps then available, eight were 
assigned to deal with the five left in the east by Germany, and 
eighteen were massed against the Austrians' twelve. 

As the gigantic battles in northern France assumed more and 
more the character of a deadlock between intrenched troops, the 
Allies looked to Russia to invade Germany with her vast armies 
and compel Germany to turn attention to the east. It was 
generally assumed that the Russians would sweep like a tidal 
wave toward Berlin, while the weakened German battle-line 
in the west would be beaten back out of France and Belgium. 
But month after month dragged by, and although the fighting 
forces surged back and forth on the eastern frontier of Germany 
there was little sign of the "tidal wave." 

In order to understand the failure of the Russians in the early 
stages of the war to overwhelm Germany in the east, one must 
realize that Russia had to battle not only against the well- 
trained and perfectly equipped soldiers of Germany, and the 
somewhat less efficient soldiers of Austria-Hungary, but also 
against geography. European Russia, it should be observed, 
formed a huge wedge, with Russian Poland as the rather blunt 
point of the wedge, thrust in between German East Prussia on 
the north and Austrian Galicia on the south. The point of the 
wedge was less than two hundred miles from Berlin, but before 
the wedge could be driven into Germany, the Germans would 
have to be crowded out of East Prussia and the Austrians out 

41 



42 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of Galicia. In other words, no army would be safe in proceeding 
from Russian Poland against Berlin so long as the Germans from 
the north and the Austrians from the south could close in and 
cut off the communications of that army with its sources of supply 
in Russia. For this reason the Russian generalissimo, the Grand 
Duke Nicholas, instead of marching his chief armies straight 
westward from Warsaw to Berlin, deflected them to the north 
and to the south. 

To the north lay East Prussia, and hither the Russians pene- 
trated about the middle of August. In invading East Prussia, 
the Russians would have to overcome three serious obstacles. 
First there was a chain of almost impassable lakes, marshes, 
and rivers, stretching from Johannisberg to Insterburg. Be- 
hind this lake barrier lay the fortified camp of Konigsberg with 
one German army corps, in the north, and Allenstein, with an- 
other army corps, in the south. StilLftirther west was the strong 
line of the Vistula river, defended by Danzig, Marienburg, 
Graudenz, and Thorn. The main bodies of Russian invaders 
avoided the lake country near the eastern frontier of East 
Prussia. One Russian army, under General Rennenkampf, 
proceeded directly westward from Kovno, defeated the Germans 
at Gumbinnen on August 17-20, pressed on to Insterburg, and 
drove the Konigsberg army corps to the shelter of its fortifica- 
tions. Simultaneously another and larger Russian army in- 
vaded East Prussia from the south, between the lake barrier 
on the east and the Vistula on the west, and with dash and vigor 
took Allenstein and pressed back a second German army corps. 

But suddenly, as they turned westward, the Russians dis- 
covered on their flank three fresh German army corps which 
had hastily been brought up by rail and detrained near Allen- 
stein. In the battle that then took place, August 26-31, in 
the neighborhood of Tannenburg and the Masurian lakes, the 
Russian army was enveloped and completely routed. At the 
end of the contest, the German commander, General von Hinden- 
burg, could report the capture of 90,000 Russians, including two 
generals, besides the equipment and supplies of three whole 
army corps. The news reached Berlin in time to transform the 
anniversary of Sedan (September 1) into a triumphal celebration 
of Hindenburg's great victory. The German general followed 
up his success by driving the Russians out of East Prussia. The 
Russian invasion of East Prussia had definitely failed. Hinden- 
burg was the "man of the hour"; he was to all the German 
people both savior and hero ; and the Kaiser promptly raised 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 



43 



him to the rank of Field Marshal and made him generalissimo 
of the armies in the East. 

On September 15, Hindenburg passed the East Prussian border 
on a wide front and carried the war into the Russian district 
of Suwalki. Rennenkampf retired before him, fighting rear- 
guard actions, until the Niemen river was reached. Here the 
Russian commander, reenforced from Kovno and Vilna, turned 
at bay. In vain did the Germans struggle to effect a crossing 
of the Niemen. Unable to make further headway, Hindenburg 
late in September ordered a retreat to the East Prussian frontier. 
This time it was the Russian army which followed and harassed 
a retiring foe. In the vicinity of Augustovo Rennenkampf in- 
flicted a serious defeat upon Hindenburg early in October ; and 
the Germans found no rest or safety until they were again on 
their own soil. If the Russians had failed to conquer East 
Prussia, so too had the Ggrmans failed to invade Russia from 
East Prussia. 

It had been proved alike to the Russians and to the Germans 
that East Prussia was an isolated area splendidly fitted by 
nature for defense but poorly adapted as a base for offense. 
Between Russian Poland and Austrian Galicia, however, there 
were no such natural barriers. Galicia was not an isolated area, 
nor was it defended by a Hindenburg or by perfectly disciplined 
German troops. To Galicia, therefore, the Russians directed 
their major attention. 

THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF GALICIA 

At the outbreak of the Great War it had fallen to the lot of 
the Austrians to bear the brunt of the struggle with Russia, while 
the Germans were conquering Belgium and France. It was a 
hard lot, for Austria-Hungary as a military Power was far less 
efficient than Germany ; she was a hodge-podge of quarrelsome 
nationalities; and now she had to wage war on the Bosnian 
front against Serbia and Montenegro and keep a reserve force 
at Trieste and in the Trentino against the possible intervention 
of Italy as well as to defend Galicia. Galicia belonged naturally 
and geographically to Russia and Poland, for from Austria 
proper and from Hungary it was separated by the range of the 
Carpathians. To be sure, an invading army would have to 
cross numerous rivers with which Galicia was provided, and 
would have to encounter very strong fortifications which Austria 
had erected at Lemberg, at Jaroslav and Przemysl, and at 



44 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Cracow. But after all, the best means of defending Galicia 
would probably be an attack upon Russian Poland before the 
Russians were fully mobilized. 

Accordingly, two Austro-Hungarian armies, numbering 300,000 
men each, were collected in Galicia early in August, 1914. The 
one, commanded by General Dankl, was based on the fortresses 
of Przemysl and Jaroslav and was destined for an invasion of 
Russian Poland on a front east and west from Tomasov to the 
Vistula. The other, under General von Auffenburg, was based 
on Lemberg and extended north and south from the upper 
waters of the Bug to the town of Halicz, at right angles with 
General Dankl's. On August 10 General Dankl crossed the 
frontier, captured Krasnik, won successes near Lublin, and 
pressed the Russians under General Ivanov back over the Bug 
river. 

The Russians had not planned to attack Galicia from the 
north. Their mobilization was proceeding more to the east, 
especially at Lutsk, Dubno, and Kiev. Their real plans were 
gradually disclosed when they at once retired before Dankl 
and assailed Auffenburg in full force. On August 14, General 
Ruzsky, with a large Russian army, based on Lutsk and Dubno, 
moved over the northeastern boundary of Galicia, captured 
Sokal, and in six days marched to within thirty miles of Lem- 
berg. Simultaneously another large Russian army, under 
General Brussilov, had come westwards from Kiev and was 
advancing against Auffenburg's right flank by way of Tarnapol 
and the valley of the Sereth. Brussilov took Tarnapol on 
August 27, then Halicz, and then wheeled north against Lemberg. 

On September 1-2, the critical battle of Lemberg was fought. 
While Brussilov fiercely attacked the Austrian right and carried 
the line of the Gnila Lipa, Ruzsky swept to the north of the city, 
drove in the Austrian left, and threatened Auffenburg's com- 
munications. Austrian generalship proved defective, and some 
of the Slav contingents in the Austrian army abandoned their 
posts and threw down their arms at the first favorable oppor- 
tunity. The Russians took at least 100,000 prisoners, and on 
September 3 entered Lemberg in triumph, giving the city the 
genuinely Slavic name of Lvov. 

After the battle of Lemberg, Brussilov sent a detachment of 
his army to occupy Czernowitz, the capital of Bukowina, and 
to seize the passes through the Carpathians, and with his main 
force, in company with Ruzsky, advanced toward Przemysl 
on a front from Stryj to Rawaruska. The Russian advance in 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 45 

Galicia seriously menaced General Dankl's operations in Russian 
Poland. Two German army corps were dispatched to the aid 
of AufTenburg; Austrian reinforcements were hastily brought 
up ; and a new Austrian army, under the Archduke Joseph 
Ferdinand, was put in the field, from the Vistula to Lublin. 
Thus, early in September, the three Austrian armies were drawn 
up in the form of a quarter arc extending from the Vistula, past 
Lublin, Rawaruska, and Grodek, to the Dniester. 

On this extended front a great battle was fought, September 
6-10. The Archduke Joseph was decisively beaten and driven 
in ignominious retreat southward toward the San. Dankl 
fought well, but failed to maintain his position. AufTenburg 
was worse battered than before. This time there was a rout 
along the entire Austrian front. This time there was a head- 
long flight to Jaroslav and Przemysl, and the vanguard of the 
vanquished halted only under the protecting guns of far-away 
Cracow. The synchronizing of this great Russian victory with 
the battle of the Marne on the Western Front gave new courage 
and delight to the Allies : Austrians could be overcome by 
Russians as decisively as Germans could be defeated by French 
and British. Teutonic "invincibility" was a myth. 

Onward in Galicia pressed the Russians. On September 23, 
they captured Jaroslav and invested the fortress of Przemysl. 
By the end of September they reached Tarnow, less than a 
hundred miles from Cracow. Nearly all of Galicia was in their 
possession, and could they but seize Cracow they would have 
in their grasp the most important base for either an advance 
through Silesia toward Berlin or a direct thrust at Vienna. Occu- 
pation of Cracow would afford them a means of turning the 
flank of the strong German positions in East Prussia and Posen 
and of seriously interfering with the economic resources of the 
Teutonic Powers. 

But the Russians were too optimistic. Early in October, 
Field Marshal von Hindenburg was put in command of all the 
German and Austro-Hungarian forces in the East. Leaving a 
small army in East Prussia, he immediately set to work to pre- 
pare a counter-offensive against the Russians in Poland. Now 
that the contest on the Western Front had assumed the character 
of trench warfare, fewer men were needed there to defend the 
trenches than had been required to conduct field operations. 
Consequently several army corps were transferred to the East, 
and with these and with army corps and reservists already in 
Silesia and Posen, Hindenburg massed an army of at least 



46 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

750,000 Germans between the fortress of Thorn and the town of 
Lublinitz in southern Silesia. At the same time he superin- 
tended the organization, near Cracow, of two Austrian armies, 
which, bolstered up with several German officers and including 
a liberal interspersing of German soldiers, aggregated close to one 
million. 

In the second week of October, Hindenburg struck out all 
along his extended line. The Grand Duke Nicholas, the Russian 
generalissimo, at once perceiving the danger to his armies operat- 
ing in western Galicia, ordered a general withdrawal to Warsaw, 
the Vistula, and the San. By the middle of October, Hinden- 
burg's left wing was at Plock on the lower Vistula; his center 
was east of Lowicz and nearing Warsaw ; his left was between 
Radom and Ostrowiecs ; while Dankl with one Austrian army- 
was at the junction of the San and Vistula, and the other Austrian 
army was recapturing Jaroslav and raising the siege of Przemysl. 

A fight for Warsaw raged on October 16-19. The German 
left flank was turned by a Russian reserve army unexpectedly 
brought up from Novo Georgievsk by General Rennenkampf, 
and Hindenburg's left and center were compelled to retire. But 
the most determined righting took place on his right as the result 
of a desperate attempt of the Germans to cross the Vistula at 
Ivangorod and at the narrows near Josef ov. The Russians 
under General Ruzsky successfully held Ivangorod and allowed 
only such divisions to cross at Josefov as could be captured or 
annihilated in the roadless country behind the town. On 
October 22, the German right wing was compelled to retire from 
the Vistula; on November 3, Ruzsky drove it from Kielce. 
Hindenburg's first great offensive against Warsaw had failed. 
He withdrew his forces behind the Warthe river near the German 
frontier, and the Austrians were again back on Cracow. Again 
the Russians occupied Jaroslav and invested Przemysl; again 
they advanced upon Cracow. 

The Russians were determined to possess themselves of all 
Galicia. In spite of renewed counter-offensives conducted by 
the Germans in Poland and by the Austrians in the Carpathians, 
they clung doggedly to their task throughout the winter of 
1914-1915. On December 8, 1914, a Russian army under 
Radko Dmitriev, formerly chief of staff of the Bulgarian army 
but now in the service of the Tsar, fought an indecisive battle 
almost at the outskirts of Cracow. A few days later the Aus- 
trians' capture of the Dukla Pass in the Carpathians obliged 
him to withdraw from the vicinity of Cracow, but he intrenched 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 47 

himself near Tarnow and held this position throughout the 
winter. 

Meanwhile another Russian army was overrunning Bukowina, 
which commanded the southeastern end of the Carpathian 
barrier. On January 6, 191 5, it captured the town of Kimpo- 
lung, at the southern extremity of the province, and on Janu- 
ary 17, it gained the pass of Kirlibaba, leading westward into 
Hungary, and threatened Transylvania. If the Russians could 
successfully occupy both Bukowina and Transylvania, — 
provinces peopled mainly by Rumans, — Rumania would be 
likely to enter the war and cooperate with the Russians, turning 
the eastern flank of the Carpathian ridge, while the Russians 
swarmed over the central Carpathian passes. 

The situation called for strenuous and immediate action on 
the part of Austria-Hungary. The supersession of Count 
Berchtold as foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy by Baron 
Stephan Burian, a friend and compatriot of Count Tisza, the 
Hungarian premier, on January 13, 191 5, was interpreted as a 
sign of the Emperor's determination to protect Magyar interests 
at all costs. While Hindenburg prepared to distract the at- 
tention of the Russians by new attacks in Poland, Archduke 
Eugene of Austria marshaled his forces in three great armies 
for a supreme effort to secure the Carpathian ridge, relieve the 
hard-pressed garrison of Przemysl, free Bukowina, and intimi- 
date Rumania. 

In the second half of January the Austrian counter-offensive 
was launched. The first Austrian army, under General Boehm- 
Ermolli, moved up into the three central Carpathian passes 
(Dukla, Lupkow, and Uzsok) with the object of advancing north 
to the relief of beleaguered Przemysl. The second army, under 
the command of the German General von Linsingen, operated 
from Munkacs northward in the passes east of Uzsok. The 
third army, comprising both German and Austro-Hungarian 
troops, was led by General von Pflanzer against the Russians 
in Bukowina. General von Pflanzer made rapid progress. 
Kirlibaba Pass was retaken; the weak Russian defense of 
Czernowitz succumbed on February 18; and the Austro-Ger- 
mans turned northward into Galicia, passing Kolomea, and 
holding the important railway center of Stanislau for a brief 
space, until they were forced back on Kolomea, March 3. General 
von Linsingen, however, failed dismally in his attempt to ad- 
vance from Munkacs toward Lemberg. Even more disappoint- 
ing was the result of General Boehm-Ermolli's campaign against 



4 8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the central passes : after two months of bitter battles in the 
snow-bound mountain defiles, the Russians at the end of the 
third week in March held the Dukla Pass and the northern 
entrance to Lupkow. 

The culminating failure of the Austrian counter-offensive 
and the crowning success of the Russian Galician campaign 
was the surrender, on March 22, of the Austrian fortress of 
Przemysl, which had been besieged by the Russians ever since 
November 12. The situation of the garrison had become alarm- 
ing early in March. After provisions were well-nigh exhausted 
and a breach had been effected by the Russians in the outer 
ring of defenses, General von Kusmanek had ordered a last 
desperate sortie, March 18. This failing disastrously, he de- 
stroyed a considerable quantity of ammunition and then sur- 
rendered the city. By the capture of Przemysl the Russians 
won 120,000 prisoners, about a thousand guns, and less im- 
portant stores of small arms. More significant still, the rail- 
way leading westward from Lemberg through Przemysl to Tarnow 
and Cracow was at last cleared, and the investing army of 
100,000 men was released for aggressive operations elsewhere. 
The Russians profited by their improved position to renew the 
offensive in the Carpathian passes, and by the end of April they 
were in possession of the Carpathian crest for seventy-five miles,- 
commanding Dukla, Lupkow, and Rostok passes, and they were 
fiercely attacking Uzsok Pass. 

Thus, from August, 1914, to April, 1915, the Russians struggled 
to conquer Galicia. They had met with some setbacks, but 
on the whole their gains had been steadily augmented and 
solidified. Their generals had committed few mistakes or 
blunders and the rank and file had fought courageously and 
stubbornly. They were in complete possession of all eastern 
Galicia, and at its capital city of Lemberg (Lvov) they had 
installed a Russian administration. They now occupied Jaro- 
slav and Przemysl; they controlled most of the Carpathian 
passes ; they threatened Bukowina and Hungary at one end of 
their Galician conquest ; and at the other end they menaced 
Cracow and with it the most direct routes to Berlin and Vienna. 

To many publicists of Western Europe it seemed high time that 
the long-heralded Russian "tidal wave" or "steam roller" 
should sweep out of the comparatively restricted province of 
Galicia and descend with magnificent might and irresistible force 
over the plains of Austria and Hungary, on one side, and over 
the rich valley of the Oder, on the other. It had been for this 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 49 

spectacular denouement that French and British and Belgians 
had been pouring out their blood upon the Western battlefields ; 
for this they had been impatiently waiting in their trenches 
throughout the long, dreary winter-months. It was now spring, 
and the Russians were still a goodly number of miles away from 
Cracow. Until Cracow should be captured and Galicia en- 
tirely cleared of the enemy, the Russian commander-in-chief 
knew it would be suicidal to undertake an invasion of Germany. 

As the event proved, there had been a fallacy in the reason- 
ing of Western publicists concerning the Russian "masses" 
and "hordes." These publicists had at first underestimated 
the speed and efficiency with which the early mobilization was 
effected. Then, knowing that Russia comprised a population 
almost three times as large as that of the German Empire, they 
had proceeded to underestimate the difficulties of continued 
military activity on the part of Russia and therefore to over- 
estimate the momentum of the "steam roller." 

The Russian armies, in fact, were not "steam rollers" and 
were not likely to be. The lines of communication upon which 
they had to depend were wretchedly inadequate. Most of the 
soldiers were distressingly ignorant not only of the rudiments 
of reading and writing but also of why they were fighting. The 
officers and men alike were woefully dependent upon an auto- 
cratic regime at Petrograd, which at its best was clumsy, in- 
efficient, and capricious, and which at its worst was tyrannical, 
cruel, and corrupt. Corruption had eaten into the very vitals 
of the military administration, as well as of the civil bureaucracy, 
and in the critical year 1914-1915 signs were plenty that large 
funds which should have bought guns and rifles and ammunition 
and airplanes and motor cars had shamefully disappeared in 
the pockets of grafting officials and contractors. A war that was 
to be waged by weight of armor and projectiles even more than 
by weight of numbers found the Russians peculiarly short of 
heavy artillery. To be sure, the lack of ammunition and other 
military equipment was gradually supplied, at least in con- 
siderable part, by importations from Japan and America, but 
such supplies had to be transported over the long, light Siberian 
railway (much of it single track) ; and imports from western 
Europe could enter only through the port of Archangel, which 
was blocked by ice six months of the year. Throughout Russia 
the few, ill-equipped railways were congested with foodstuffs 
and army supplies going to the troops in Poland and Galicia. 
The more troops there were at the front, the greater was the con- 

E 



50 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

gestion on the railways ; the greater the congestion, the more 
difficult it was properly to take care of the troops at the front 
or to bring up reinforcements of men. In other words, the 
preliminary mobilization in August, 1914, was Russia's best. 
For Russia it was physically impossible to mobilize all her fight- 
ing men and get them to the front for effective service. If 
Russia could not overwhelm Germany in the early stages of 
the war, her chances of doing so as time went on grew less rather 
than greater. Despite what was said at the time in western 
Europe, it is probable that in the spring of 191 5 the combined 
forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the East already 
outnumbered the effectives of Russia. 

In view of these facts it is wonderful that the Russian armies 
achieved what they did. They were unable successfully to 
invade Germany, but they wrested most of Galicia from Austria- 
Hungary. They might conceivably have gone further, taken 
Cracow, and entered Silesia, had not the Germans transferred 
large forces from Flanders and France to Poland and Galicia. 
This gave the Allies some respite in the West ; and it compelled 
Germany to wage the war simultaneously on two fronts, shifting 
her troops back and forth as occasion required, and finding her 
magnificent strategic railways of incalculable value. Skillful 
distribution of forces, able generalship, and superior equip- 
ment enabled the Germans, with Austrian assistance, to hold 
back the early Russian invasions and later to take up an ad- 
vanced position in Russian Poland. 

That the Russian invasion of Galicia was finally halted early 
in the spring of 191 5 and that it never reached the all-important 
city of Cracow, is to be explained not only by reference to cor- 
ruption and inefficiency in the Russian government but also 
by the series of counter-offensives which Hindenburg directed 
against Russian Poland in the winter of 1914-1915. 

THE GERMAN INVASION OF RUSSIAN POLAND 

In October, 1914, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, as we have 
seen, had undertaken the first German invasion of Russian 
Poland. Though he had failed on that occasion to capture 
Warsaw or to compel the permanent withdrawal of Russian forces 
from western Galicia, he had utilized his retreat from the Vistula 
so as to pave the way for a second invasion. As he retired to 
the trenches which he had constructed behind the War the, 
he systematically tore up the railways and laid waste the broad 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 51 

belt of country in southwestern Poland between the Vistula 
and the Warthe, so that the Russians who followed him to his 
trenches were without adequate means of communication in 
their rear. Then, Hindenburg, leaving a small force to man the 
trenches in front of the desolated Polish region, commissioned 
General von Mackensen to collect a large army at Thorn and 
to advance with it up the Vistula into the still flourishing 
district of northwestern Poland. 

Early in November, Mackensen collected an army of at least 
800,000, based on the fortress of Thorn ; and the second German 
drive against Warsaw began. Aided by Mackensen from the 
northwest, Hindenburg struck out from the Warthe, and on 
November 23-24 pierced the hostile lines near Lodz and cap- 
tured some 90,000 Russians. Reinforcements came up and the 
battle continued nearly two weeks, but at length, on December 6, 
the Russians abandoned Lodz and fell back to within thirty- 
five miles of Warsaw. Here, another great battle was waged 
until Christmas, by which time the Russian defenders and the 
German assailants were facing each other in parallel lines of 
trenches not unlike those from which Germans and Allies were 
viewing each other on the Western Front. The second German 
invasion of Russian Poland, like the first, had failed to reach 
Warsaw ; unlike the first, it had not caused the Russians even 
temporarily to withdraw from western Galicia. Yet this second 
invasion secured the permanent possession of western Poland 
for Germany and inaugurated on a large scale in the East the 
system of trench warfare. 

At the beginning of 191 5, the Russian armies were strung out 
in a battle-line almost nine hundred miles long. The center of 
the Russian line, under General Ruzsky, was strongly intrenched 
in Russian Poland, behind the Rawka and Bzura rivers, and in 
front of the powerful fortresses of Novo Georgievsk, Warsaw, and 
Ivangorod. The right of the Russian line, likewise under 
Ruzsky's general command, stretched northeastwards of the 
Narew river, through the Masurian lake region of East Prussia, 
to the Niemen river. The left of the Russian army, under 
General Ivanov, included General Ewarts's army on the Nida 
river, west of Kielce; General Radko Dmitriev's army in 
Galicia, holding Tarnow; General Brussilov's army, holding 
the northern approaches to the Carpathian mountain passes; 
and General Alexeiev's army, operating in Bukowina. Opposing 
the Russian right wing were four German army corps in East 
Prussia; the Russian center was confronted by strongly in- 



52 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

trenched German forces under General von Mackensen ; on 
the left wing was General Dankl's Austrian army west of the 
Nida river ; south of that and west of Tarnow, General Woyrsch's 
Austro-German army; and the extreme Russian left flank in 
the Carpathians was harried by the Austrian Archduke Eugene 
from the south. 

Throughout the winter of 1914-1915, Hindenburg's strategy 
was to direct powerful blows, now from East Prussia against 
the Russian right, now from Mackensen's front in middle Poland 
against the Russian center, in the hope that thereby the Russian 
right or the Russian center would be so weakened as to admit 
of a deep penetration by the Germans. In this fashion Warsaw 
and its protecting positions might either be taken by a frontal 
attack or be turned by a flanking movement from East Prussia. 
In December, 1914, Mackensen tried a gigantic frontal attack, 
and failed. During the first week of February, 1915, he at- 
tempted another vast frontal attack: under cover of a terrific 
bombardment, and in the face of a blinding snowstorm, his 
troops carried three lines of Russian trenches east of the Rawka 
river, only to be met by the fiercest and bravest resistance and 
ultimately to be pushed back on the Rawka. In the middle of 
February, Hindenburg tried a huge flanking movement from 
East Prussia : in the north a German army annihilated a Russian 
corps at Suwalki, won a foothold on the eastern bank of the 
Niemen near Grodno, and reached a point only ten miles from 
the Petrograd-Warsaw railway ; simultaneously, another Ger- 
man army advanced to the Bobr river and began a bombardment 
of Ossowietz, while a third swiftly struck at Przasnysz, sixty 
miles north of Warsaw, in a determined effort to cross the Narew 
and cut the lines of communication with the Polish capital. 
But the flanking movement, like the frontal attacks, failed. By 
the end of February, the assaults on the Niemen, on the Bobr, 
and on the Narew had been stopped, and the Germans were in 
full retreat towards the East Prussian frontier. In March and 
April there was a lull — the lull before the great storm. 

By April, 1915, the Russians were in possession of the greater 
part of Austrian Galicia, but the Germans were secure in East 
Prussia and were in occupation of one-third of Russian Poland. 
4 The Russians still held Warsaw and the main strongholds of 
Poland, and they had brilliantly resisted drive after drive of 
Hindenburg and Mackensen. As time went on, however, it 
became apparent that the offensive was passing more and more 
from the Russians to the Germans. It was believed in the West 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 53 

that time was on the side of the Russians. Events were soon 
to demonstrate that time was on the side of the Germans. 

In reading the story of the military operations in the Polish 
theater of war, one should not entirely forget the tragic plight 
of the Polish nation. The once glorious kingdom of Poland, 
it will be remembered, had been partitioned toward the close of 
the eighteenth century by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Con- 
sequently, although the Poles constituted a homogeneous nation 
of twenty-three millions, possessing a national language and 
literature and in Roman Catholicism a common religion, dwelling 
in the plains of Russian Poland, Prussian Posen, and Austrian 
Galicia, and passionately desiring to restore their political unity 
and freedom, they were now compelled to fight in opposing armies 
and to furnish the battleground for Russia, Germany, and 
Austria-Hungary. The march and counter-march of millions 
of soldiers, and the havoc caused by hundreds of howitzers, to 
say nothing of systematic destruction wrought by German orders, 
devastated Poland more completely than Belgium. Without 
food or homes the Polish peasants perished miserably. 

Yet for the future, perhaps, a slight ray of hope could be dis- 
cerned. Russia, long the cruel oppressor of the largest section 
of Poland, now feared a Polish revolt and promised Poland 
autonomy in return for loyalty. Early in August, 1914, the 
Grand Duke Nicholas, generalissimo of the Russian forces, issued 
the following eloquent manifesto to the Poles: "The hour has 
sounded when the sacred dream of your fathers and your grand- 
fathers may be realized. A century and a half has passed since 
the living body of Poland was torn in pieces, but the soul of the 
country is not dead. It continues to live, inspired by the hope 
that there will come for the Polish people an hour of resurrection, 
and of fraternal reconciliation with Great Russia. The Russian 
army brings you the solemn news of this reconciliation which 
obliterates the frontiers dividing the Polish peoples, which it 
unites conjointly under the scepter of the Russian Tsar. Under 
this scepter Poland will be born again, free in her religion and 
her language, and autonomous. Russia only expects from you 
the same respect for the rights of those nationalities to which 
history has bound you. With open heart and brotherly hand 
Great Russia advances to meet you. She believes that the 
sword, with which she struck down her enemies at Griinewald, 1 

1 The battle of Griinewald, or Tannenberg as it is more usually called, was fought 
in 1410 between the Teutonic Knights of Prussia, on one side, and the Poles and 
Lithuanians on the other. It was a decisive victory for the latter and marked the 
emergence of Poland as a Great Power. 



54 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

is not yet rusted. From the shores of the Pacific to the North 
Sea the Russian armies are marching. The dawn of a new life 
is beginning for you, and in this glorious dawn, is seen the sign 
of the cross, the symbol of suffering and of the resurrection of 
peoples." 

Similar appeals to the Poles were made by Austria-Hungary, 
who undoubtedly had accorded the Poles within her borders 
far better treatment than was received by the unfortunate Poles 
in Russia or in Prussia. In respect of Germany, no promise 
could efface from Polish memory the wrongs suffered under the 
harsh Prussian administration, which had pursued a deliberate 
policy not only of denying the Poles the use of their mother- 
tongue but also of depriving them of their lands. 

Had the Russian Tsar given immediate effect to the fair words 
of his generalissimo, it is probable that the Russian Poles would 
have rallied enthusiastically to his banner and that serious se- 
dition would have ensued in the Polish legions of the Austro- 
German armies. So long as the Russians remained in military 
occupation of Warsaw and Galicia, however, "Polish autonomy" 
remained but a hope and a promise, until, as months passed by, 
it seemed to an increasing number of Poles to be but a mirage. 
The less enthusiastically the Russian Poles fought for the Auto- 
crat of All the Russias and the less frequently their kinsmen 
deserted Teutonic service, the more quibbling became the 
Russian promises even of " autonomy. ' ' The longer the Russians, 
still in possession of most of Poland, delayed to make real con- 
cessions to the Poles, the more expectantly did the Poles turn 
to the prospect of Austro-German conquest. They certainly 
did not love the Germans ; they certainly did not desire an 
overwhelming German victory. Yet they were becoming con- 
vinced that they had nothing — perhaps less than nothing — 
to gain from an overwhelming Russian victory. 

Imperialistic autocracy in Russia was storing up great future 
tribulations for itself. Its inefficiency and corruption were 
gradually paralyzing the might of the Russian armies in the 
field. Its overweening pride and arrogance were perceptibly 
weakening the loyalty not only of Poles but of other subject 
nationalities within the Russian Empire — Ukrainians, Lithu- 
anians, and Finns. It was utilizing the temporary heat of 
national altruism and patriotism in order to forge enduring 
iron links in the chain of social inequality and political abso- 
lutism. Liberals in Russia were depressed, and revolutionaries 
desperate. Well-wishers of Russia and of the Allied cause 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 55 

throughout the world should have been alarmed and should 
have made energetic representations at Petrograd that this war 
was a war in behalf of small nationalities, that it was "a war to 
end war." 

Nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, the Russian 
conquest of Galicia and the stubborn Russian defense of Warsaw 
deceived the diplomatists of France and Great Britain as to 
the true strength of their Russian ally. On the Western Front, 
the Allies were fully holding their own, and on the Eastern Front 
the Russians seemed to be more than holding their own. What 
merely "seemed," was taken as proved reality; and the diplo- 
matists of all the Allied Powers, instead of urging moderation 
and unselfishness upon the Tsar's government, devoted the late 
winter and early spring of 191 5 to making secret treaties with 
one another whereby some of the worst features of German and 
Russian imperialism were consecrated as guiding principles for 
the peace which, in their optimistic opinion, was about to follow 
a speedy Allied victory. Russia not only was to annex Galicia 
and Posen and exercise her own sweet will over all Poland but 
she was to appropriate Constantinople and realize her age-long 
imperialistic dream of succeeding to the destinies of Byzantium. 
France not only was to regain Alsace-Lorraine but she was 
virtually to establish a protectorate over the entire left bank of 
the Rhine. Great Britain was to appropriate Egypt and Meso- 
potamia and, in conjunction with France and Japan, to partition 
all the German colonies. It was the supreme blunder of the 
Allies. It was a blunder that eventually was to constitute the 
worst indictment of professional diplomatists. 

THE SECURITY OF SERBIA 

It will be recalled that in July, 1914, Austria-Hungary had 
set out to "punish" Serbia. The task was not altogether an 
easy one. The little Slav state, poor and small as it might ap- 
pear, could boast a war army of 250,000 men, mostly seasoned 
veterans, besides a territorial reserve of 50,000; moreover, 
Serbia's ally, Montenegro, could put in the field about 50,000 
hardy mountaineers, renowned for their valor. In spite of the 
fact that the Serbs were deficient in heavy artillery, airplanes, 
and sanitary service, they enjoyed the immense advantage of 
recent experience in war and the courageous confidence imparted 
to them by their victories of 1912-1913 over Turks and Bulgars. 

Nevertheless, short shrift would undoubtedly have been made 



56 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of Serbia, had not Austria-Hungary been much engaged during 
the year of 1914-1915 with large Russian armies in Galicia and 
Poland. With such forces as could be spared from the Eastern 
theater of war, the Dual Monarchy undertook to preserve its 
southern lands from Serb invasion and to attempt incursions 
into Serbian territory. 

About the middle of August, Austrian columns were thrown 
across the Drina and Save rivers. Obviously the intention was 
to invade the northwestern corner of Serbia simultaneously 
from the west and from the north, and to converge on the Serbian 
military depot at Valievo. With frantic haste the Serbian 
Crown Prince brought his main armies by forced marches west- 
ward to meet the Austrian invasion. In the mountainous 
northwest district of their country, between the Save and the 
Drina, the Serbians fought the battles of Shabatz and the Jadar, 
August 16-23, to prevent the junction of the invading columns. 
So successful were the Serbian tactics that the Austrians were 
defeated at all points and compelled to retreat into their own 
territory. In repelling the 200,000 Austrians, the Serbians had 
lost 3000 killed and 15,000 wounded ; but they had killed some 
8000 of the enemy, wounded perhaps 30,000 and captured 
4000 ; they had, in addition, captured much needed supplies of 
rifles and ammunition. 

It was now the turn of Austria-Hungary to suffer invasion. 
Early in September, the Serbians took Semlin, across the river 
from Belgrade, while another Serbian army struck into southern 
Bosnia in the direction of Serajevo. These forces had to be 
speedily withdrawn, however, for Austria-Hungary again as- 
sumed the offensive, massing 250,000 men against the same 
northwest corner of Serbia. 

In the second week of September the Austrians advanced a 
second time on Valievo. Though fierce resistance was en- 
countered, and though another Austrian army crossing the 
Danube east of Belgrade was routed at Semendria, the main 
Austrian offensive was continued and Valievo was taken on 
November 15. Belgrade, which had been besieged and inter- 
mittently bombarded since July 29, capitulated to the Austrians 
on December 2. 

Just when Serbia's complete collapse was momentarily ex- 
pected, news came that the Serbians had broken through the 
center of the advancing Austrian army, recaptured Valievo, and 
inflicted a crushing defeat on two Austrian corps, capturing 
40,000 prisoners, fifty cannon, and munitions in immense quantity. 



RUSSIA FAILS TO OVERWHELM GERMANY 57 

The Austrian right wing was driven back in disorder across the 
Drina, where it was still further punished by the Montenegrins 
at Vishegrad. On December 15, the Serbians recaptured Bel- 
grade, and King Peter was able to reenter his former capital 
at the head of his victorious army, while all Serbia rejoiced over 
the announcement that not a single Austrian invader remained 
on Serbian soil. 

After the exhausting campaign of December, 1914, a period 
of inaction ensued in the Serbian theater of war. Serbs and 
Austrians alike had suffered heavily and needed time to repair 
their losses. Inclement weather and impassable roads added 
to the disinclination of either party to renew active operations. 
On the Austrian side, there was talk of undertaking a decisive 
offensive in February, 191 5, but this time the Italian government 
warned Austria-Hungary that any military action undertaken 
in the Balkans without previous agreement regarding the com- 
pensation to be granted Italy, would lead to grave consequences. 
Relations were already becoming strained between Italy and 
Austria-Hungary, and the latter was not inclined to draw her 
ally into the circle of her enemies just for the sake of "punish- 
ing" Serbia. Meanwhile, profiting by the inactivity of Austria- 
Hungary in the south, Serbia sought as best she could, with some 
foreign aid, to repair the horrible ravages which the typhus, in 
combination with the past year's campaigns, had wrought in 
her army and among her civilian population. 

With the exception of minor frontier engagements and rather 
desultory bombardments of Belgrade, the Serbian front remained 
comparatively quiet until October, 191 5. Austria-Hungary had 
as yet failed to " punish" Serbia, but, on the other hand, the 
Serbs had as yet been unable to take advantage of the Dual 
Monarchy's discomfiture in Galicia in order to free their kins- 
folk of Bosnia-Herzegovina and of Croatia-Slavonia from Habs- 
burg rule. Serbian despair and Serbian rejoicing alike waited 
on the outcome of the tremendous battles in progress between 
Russians and Austro-Germans along the nine-hundred mile 
line from the Niemen river through Russian Poland and Galicia 
to the Carpathian mountain passes and Bukowina. To a lesser 
degree they waited on the outcome of a contest of wit which at 
the very time was being carried on between Teutonic and Allied 
diplomatists in the several Balkan capitals. But this story 
belongs to a later chapter. 



CHAPTER IV 

GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 

IMPORTANCE OF SEA POWER 

At the beginning of the Great War it was confidently believed 
in Allied countries that France and Russia would be able to hold 
in equipoise the military forces of Germany and Austria-Hun- 
gary, while Great Britain, by means of the weight of her enor- 
mous naval superiority, could tip the balance against the Teu- 
tonic Powers. Little was expected from unmilitary Britain in 
the way of armed intervention on the continent of Europe, but 
much was expected from her naval power and her naval prowess. 

The Great War was far more than a conflict over Serbia and 
Alsace-Lorraine ; it was a struggle for world dominion. And 
world dominion depended quite as much on the mastery of the 
seas as upon a conquest of Belgium or an invasion of Galicia. 

From the time she entered the war on that fateful day in 
August, 1914, Great Britain used her naval superiority both for 
defense and for offense. Of the two, defense was the more vitally 
necessary. From the very nature of things, the command of the 
seas was even more essential to Great Britain's preservation than 
it was injurious to Germany's welfare. To be sure, the German 
merchant marine and German commerce would be swept from 
the seas, involving thereby the partial inability of Germany to 
import foodstuffs, copper, or munitions of war, or to market the 
products of her industry. All this would entail direct financial 
losses of alarming size. But Germany might make her food sup- 
ply last by strict economy ; she had large stores of most mate- 
rials requisite for war ; and the effectiveness of her army did not 
depend absolutely upon control of the sea. To Great Britain, how- 
ever, the loss of the seas would have spelled ruin. Her people 
would have been starved, her industries throttled, and her army 
prevented from engaging in the battles of France. The very fact 
that Germany was a large country combining agriculture and 
manufacture, surrounded by contiguous neutral countries, as con- 
trasted with the insularity and almost complete industrialization 

58 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 59 

of Great Britain, explains the secondary importance of naval 
power to Germany, and its primary importance to Great Britain. 

Though the paramount purpose of the British navy was de- 
fense, the Germans shuddered perceptibly when they fell to 
thinking of the purposes of offense for which it would now be 
employed. In the first place Great Britain undertook a drastic 
"war on German trade," which threatened to deprive the manu- 
facturer of his business, the workingman of his employment, and 
the statesman of his country's prosperity. In the second place, 
the control of the high seas by Great Britain would make it 
increasingly difficult for Germany to carry on the war success- 
fully ; it would enable Great Britain to scour the four quarters of 
the globe for recruits and to bring back negroes from Africa, 
Asiatics from India, Malays, Australians, New Zealanders, and 
Canadians, to fight in Europe against Germany ; it would make 
possible the landing in France of a million British soldiers already 
in training in England ; it would create bitter hardship for the 
civilian population of Germany through lack of sufficient food. 
Finally, even should the German armies crush France and Russia, 
the British fleet could still stand between Germany and her 
dreams of world empire, for as long as the British fleet sailed the 
seas it could prevent Germany from becoming the greatest 
colonial and commercial Power and could assure to Great Britain 
the possession of the most valuable colonies and " spheres of 
influence" throughout the world. It was this naval superiority 
of Great Britain and the thought of its significance that caused 
the Germans forthwith to take up the chanting of hymns of hate 
as a national pastime. 

Early in the war the British fleet achieved much. Though it 
could not altogether prevent the Germans from planting mines 
and torpedoes along the coasts of the North Sea and bombarding 
Russian ports in the Baltic, it compelled the German battle 
squadron to lie idle at its moorings in Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven, 
and Kiel. Admiral von Tirpitz, the director of the German 
navy, was so much inclined to consider discretion the better part 
of valor that the English comic papers appropriately styled him 
the "Admiral of the Kiel Canal." The only hostile warships 
which proved embarrassing to the British were two in the Medi- 
terranean and a squadron in the Far East. 

At the outbreak of the war one of Germany's swiftest and 
most powerful battle-cruisers, the Goeben, and a light cruiser, the 
Breslau, happened to be in the western Mediterranean, where 
they might conceivably interfere with the transportation of 



60 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

French troops from Algeria to France, but were much more 
likely to fall in with superior French or British naval units. 
British and French warships immediately gave chase to the two 
German cruisers, which, however, eluded pursuit and made port 
first at Messina and then at Constantinople. From the refuge 
of these cruisers in Turkish waters led the causal chain of cir- 
cumstances which subsequently lugged the Ottoman Empire 
into the Great War. 

In the Far East Germany possessed a squadron of eight 
cruisers, which early in the war managed to escape from the 
naval base of Kiao-chao and for some time to elude capture or 
destruction. Five of the number, the Schamhorst, Gneisenau, 
Niirnberg, Leipzig, and Dresden, under command of Admiral von 
Spee, were at last sighted by Admiral Cradock's smaller British 
squadron on the evening of November i, 1914, off the coast of 
Chile near Coronel. As the sun sank behind the horizon, and 
the heavy seas dashed against the bows of the British ships, the 
British gunners experienced serious difficulty in training their 
guns on the German ships and were unable to make any impres- 
sion upon the heavier armor of the Germans. Fifty minutes 
after the first shot was fired, the Good Hope blew up, shooting a 
column of fire two hundred feet in the air. Shortly afterwards 
the Monmouth was sunk, and the two other British ships were 
making off to escape destruction. 

The British had their revenge a little more than a month 
later. On December 8 a powerful British squadron, which had 
been sent out under Vice-Admiral Sturdee to search for the five 
German cruisers, sighted them off the Falkland Islands. Accord- 
ing to the laconic statement of the British admiralty, "an action 
followed, in the course of which the Schamhorst, flying the flag of 
Admiral Count von Spee, the Gneisenau, and the Leipzig were 
sunk. The Dresden and the Niirnberg made off during the 
action and are being pursued. Two colliers also were captured. 
The Vice Admiral reports that the British casualties are very 
few in number. Some survivors have been rescued from the 
Gneisenau and the Leipzig." The Niirnberg was overtaken and 
destroyed the same night, but it was not until March, 1915, that 
the Dresden was wrecked. 

The three swift German cruisers in the Far East not included 
in Admiral von Spee's fleet had spectacular careers for some 
time as commerce raiders and managed to inflict considerable 
injury on Allied shipping. One of these cruisers, the Emden, 
commanded by the intrepid Captain Karl von Muller, cruised 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 61 

the waters about the East Indies for three months, destroying 
twenty-five merchant vessels valued, exclusive of their cargoes, 
at ten million dollars, firing the oil tanks at Madras, sinking four 
British steamers in Rangoon harbor alone, and stealing into the 
harbor of Penang disguised by the addition of a false smokestack 
to sink a Russian cruiser and a French torpedo boat. The 
Emden was not a powerful ship ; her displacement was only 
3350 tons, her speed less than 25 knots, and her largest guns 
only 4.1 inches. Again and again more powerful warships were 
on the Emden' s trail, but each time she escaped, until one day 
Captain Muller decided to destroy the wireless station at Cocos 
Islands, southwest of Java. There the Emden was discovered 
by an Australian cruiser and driven ashore in flames after a 
sharp battle. The career of the second German raider, the 
Konigsberg, had come to an end a few days earlier, when, after 
destroying about a dozen merchantmen, she was caught hiding 
in shoal waters up a river in German East Africa. 

Once in a while a cruiser would slip out of a German home base 
and commit depredations on the high seas, but such a raider 
would ultimately be detected and lost. Thus the Prinz Eitel 
Friedrich was obliged to take refuge in Newport News, Virginia, 
on March 10, 191 5, after a destructive cruise of more than 
30,000 miles. Similarly, the Kronprinz Wilhelm, after sinking 
nine British, four French, and one Norwegian merchantmen, 
entered Newport News on April n, 191 5, and was interned. 
But after all, the number of these German raiders was too small 
and their life too precarious to constitute any grave menace to 
British naval supremacy or even to affect British commerce seri- 
ously. The exploits were spectacular rather than significant, and 
the most they accomplished was to dwarf in popular esteem the 
quieter and more substantial achievements of the British navy. 

The fact remains that the German merchant marine was 
swept from the seas swiftly and methodically within a week of 
the outbreak of war. In every quarter of the globe British war- 
ships, in- conjunction with the fleets of France and Russia, spread 
their net and caught virtually the whole sea-borne trade of 
Germany. German merchantmen in the ports of the Allies were 
detained, and hundreds were made prizes of "in the high and the 
narrow seas." Some escaped to the shelter of ports still neutral, 
especially to those of the United States, but none got back to 
Germany. By the sheer threat of naval superiority, the British 
had annihilated German commerce and protected their own and 
that of their allies. 



62 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

From British naval superiority it resulted, moreover, that the 
French could transport colonial troops to the battle-line in 
Western Europe, that the British Expeditionary Force under Sir 
John French could be safely landed in France in August, 1914, 
and that munitions and supplies could flow freely from the 
United States to France and England while their entrance into 
Germany was effectually barred. 

Spectacular deeds were not entirely confined to the Germans. 
As early as August 28, 191 4, Sir David Beatty, a promising aspir- 
ant for naval fame, led a British fleet, accompanied by a flotilla 
of submarines and destroyers, into the bight of Heligoland and 
engaged part of the German fleet almost under the guns of the 
great German naval base. Three German armored cruisers and 
one destroyer were sunk, and 700 German sailors were killed and 
300 taken prisoners ; the British casualties were thirty-two killed 
and fifty-two wounded. 

No other important naval engagement was fought until the 
battle off Dogger Bank on January 24, 1915, in which a German 
battle-cruiser squadron raiding the coast of England was severely 
punished for its temerity. Three powerful German cruisers 
were seriously injured by a British fleet under Beatty, but made 
their escape to Heligoland, thanks to the dense screening smoke 
of a destroyer flotilla and to the timely appearance of German 
submarines. A fourth cruiser, however, the slower and less 
powerful Blucher, fell an easy victim and was first crippled by 
gunfire, then torpedoed and sunk. The engagement was a con- 
clusive demonstration of the value of big guns and high speed in 
modern naval warfare. 

THE PARTICIPATION OF JAPAN 

In mastering the seas and the German colonies Great Britain 
enjoyed the special assistance of Japan. On August 15, 19 14, — 
less than two weeks after the declaration of war between Great 
Britain and Germany, — the Japanese ambassador in Berlin 
handed to the German Foreign Office an ultimatum, demanding 
that Germany should immediately withdraw all warships from 
Chinese and Japanese waters and deliver up the entire leased 
territory of Kiao-chao before September 15, "with a view to the 
eventual restoration of the same to China." 

Kiao-chao, it should be remembered, was a bay on the northern 
Chinese coast, with 117 square miles of surrounding territory, 
which had been seized in 1897 an d then leased for ninety-nine years 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 



63 



by Germany as compensation for the murder of two German 
missionaries in China. At Tsing-tao, on the leased ground, 
the German government at great expense had erected strong forti- 
fications, commanding the bay ; under the shelter of frowning 
forts the Germans had constructed a magnificent floating dock 
which made Tsing-tao a splendid naval base. Leading back 
from Tsing-tao the Germans had built the Shantung railway. 
Germany had invested heavily in her Kiao-chao venture, and her 
imperial position in the Far East depended largely upon its 
security. 

Upon the refusal of the German government to comply with 
the terms of the ultimatum, Japan forthwith declared war, 
August 23. The reasons for this step were set forth by Baron 




Kato, the Japanese foreign minister : "Early in August the 
British government asked the Imperial (Japanese) government 
for assistance under the terms of the Anglo- Japanese agreement 
of alliance. German men-of-war and armed vessels were then 
prowling the seas of eastern Asia to the serious menace of our 
commerce and that of our ally, while in Kiao-chao Germany was 
busy with warlike preparations, apparently for the purpose of 
making a base for warlike operations in eastern Asia. Grave 
anxiety was thus felt for the maintenance of the peace of the Far 
East. As all are aware, the agreement of alliance between 
Japan and Great Britain has for its object, the consolidation and 
maintenance of the general peace in eastern Asia, insuring the 
independence and integrity of China as well as the principle of 
equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations 
in that country, and the maintenance and defense respectively 



64 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of the territorial rights and of the special interests of the con- 
tracting parties in eastern Asia. . . . Germany's possession of 
a base for powerful activities in one corner of the Far East was 
not only a serious obstacle to the maintenance of permanent 
peace, but also was in conflict with the more immediate interests 
of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese government, therefore, 
resolved to comply with the British request, and, if necessary, 
to open hostilities against Germany." 

In addition to her desire to fulfill her obligations as Great 
Britain's ally, Japan was undoubtedly actuated also by the 
lingering resentment which had been aroused by the Kaiser's 
references to the ''Yellow Peril" and by the part Germany had 
played in preventing Japan from retaining Port Arthur in 1895 
after the Chino- Japanese War. 

Four days after the declaration of war, the Japanese navy 
established a blockade of Kiao-chao ; and on September 2, 10,000 
Japanese troops were landed on the Shantung peninsula outside 
the German leased territory. This landing, and the subsequent 
seizure of the Shantung railway in the Chinese hinterland, con- 
stituted a technical violation of China's neutrality and called 
forth formal protests from Berlin and from Pekin. A small 
British East Indian force of 1360 men arrived in September to 
cooperate with the Japanese landing party, which was raised to 
the strength of 23,000 men under the command of General Kamio. 

On September 28, Tsing-tao was fully invested by the Anglo- 
Japanese expedition and the siege begun. Bombardment by 
two German cruisers in the harbor and a sortie by the garrison 
failed to dislodge the assailants. Prince Heinrich hill, easily 
carried by assault, was crowned with Japanese guns which on 
the last day of October opened the final attack with the aid of 
Japanese and British warships. The German forts, powerful 
though they were, could not withstand the terrific fire. By 
November 6 the forts had been silenced, and the word for an 
infantry assault was given by General Kamio. Early the next 
morning the attacking party discovered that white flags had been 
hoisted in the city. The articles of capitulation were soon 
signed, and on November 10, 1914, the German governor for- 
mally handed over Kiao-chao to Japan. In addition to the 
valuable naval base, Japan had captured 3000 German prisoners. 
The Japanese landing party had lost 236 killed and 1282 
wounded; the British, 12 killed and 61 wounded. 

In the meantime Japanese naval forces were cooperating with 
the British in the conquest of Germany's island possessions in the 






GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 65 

Pacific. Japan sent no troops to Europe, but her participation 
in the Great War served the cause of the Allies in several ways. 
It deprived the swift German commerce-raiders of a most impor- 
tant base in the Far East ; it hastened the conquest of the German 
colonies ; it enabled Great Britain to rest easier about her Indian 
Empire and her Chinese interests while she was centering her 
military efforts in western Europe ; and it secured protection for 
Russia from attacks in the rear and a steady, uninterrupted flow 
of munitions of war from Japan and from America. 

THE CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 

It had been recognized that in case of war between Germany 
and Great Britain, the latter's naval superiority would normally 
admit of the conquest of the former's colonies and " spheres of 
influence" in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. When the 
war actually came in 1914, the Germans trusted to two factors 
which, they hoped, might delay, if not altogether prevent, the 
reduction of their colonies. In the first place, mindful of an old 
dictum that the destinies of the world are settled upon the battle- 
fields of Europe, they planned to strike their enemies on the 
Continent with such overwhelming military might that Great 
Britain could not spare soldiers from Europe for expeditions 
overseas and with such decisive results that any colonies which 
might temporarily have been occupied by hostile forces would 
be permanently restored as compensation for concessions from 
the conqueror of Europe. In the second place, the Germans had 
long cherished the notion that the whole British Empire was 
seething with discontent and sedition and that when war came 
Great Britain would be too embarrassed by revolts of her own 
subjects in Ireland, Canada, India, and South Africa, to bother 
about the conquest of new and foreign troublesome areas. 

Obviously the first of these factors on which the Germans 
depended was not quite operative even after a whole year of war 
had gone by. Germany had not yet won a decision on the battle- 
fields of Europe; France and Great Britain were fully holding 
their own on the Western Front, and in the East Russia was 
putting up an unexpectedly stubborn resistance. It might well 
be that the old dictum was fallacious, and that a greater measure 
of truth was contained in the argument that while other Powers 
wore themselves out on the battlefields of Europe the nation 
possessing superior sea power would conquer the four Great 
Continents. A protracted war had not been counted on by 



66 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Germany, but by the summer of 191 5 the Great War promised 
to be protracted. 

, Nor did the domestic politics of the British Empire during the 
critical first year of the war conform to German expectations. 
There were no serious and all-absorbing revolts anywhere. 
Many Irishmen were disgruntled that the Home Rule Act, passed 
in 1914, was not immediately put into effect ; but John Redmond, 
the Catholic leader of the Nationalist party, joined with Sir 
Edward Carson, the fiery Ulster Unionist, in promising united 
Irish defense against German aggression, and thousands of 
Irishmen, including several Irish members of Parliament, vol- 
unteered for active service in the British army. In Canada, 
there were many bickerings between English-speaking and 
French-speaking colonists over the language question in the 
schools, but early in the war French Canadians vied with British 
Canadians, and Liberal followers of Sir Wilfred Laurier with 
Conservative partisans of Sir Robert Borden, in offering their 
lives and their goods to the Empire; by October, 1915, the Do- 
minion of Canada, with a population less than that of the state 
of New York, had obtained a volunteer army of 200,000 men, of 
which the larger part was already in overseas service. From the 
outset no disloyalty was expected from Newfoundland, Aus- 
tralia, or New Zealand ; but as time went on, these self-governing 
British dominions surpassed expectations. Up to July, 191 5, 
Australia had furnished 100,000 troops to the Allies ; New Zea- 
land, 20,000; and Newfoundland, 3000. All these had contrib- 
uted funds beyond their proportional share ; and the two South 
Pacific dominions had, in addition, given valuable naval assist- 
ance to the Anglo-Japanese fleets. India was the more amazing. 
In spite of systematic attempts on the part of German agents and 
spies to fan the persistent spark of native unrest into the flame 
of widespread rebellion, India remained comparatively calm and 
loyal ; numerous Indian princes contributed to British armies 
and to British funds; in January, 191 5, Lord Hardinge, the 
viceroy, declared that 200,000 Indian troops were then serving 
in the active British forces at the front. Only in South Africa 
was there anything resembling armed revolt. 

In South Africa, especially in the Transvaal and the Orange 
Free State, the resentment which some of the Boers still cherished 
against their British conquerors combined with the prevalence 
of acute industrial disquiet to pave the way for the insurrection 
headed by three veteran generals of the Boer War — Beyers, 
Maritz, and DeWet. However, General Louis Botha, the prime 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 67 

minister of the South African Union, who himself had once 
borne arms against Great Britain, now remained unflinchingly 
loyal, and with him the ablest of the Boer commanders, General 
Smuts. The English-speaking South Africans and a majority of 
the Boers supported General Botha's attitude of loyalty to the 
Empire ; only a Boer minority sympathized with the rebellion. 
The efforts of the rebels had to be confined to guerrilla warfare, 
and by the close of 1914 had proved fruitless. Beyers had been 
drowned, DeWet taken prisoner, and Maritz pursued into Ger- 
man Southwest Africa. Late in December, 1914, the Union 
minister of justice stated that 4000 ex-rebels were in prison and 
1000 on parole. Leniency was uniformly shown the rank and 
file in the trials which ensued; and in 191 5 Generals Botha and 
Smuts were aiding the British powerfully in the conquest of 
German Southwesjt Africa and German East Africa. In Great 
Britain General Smuts was received as a conquering hero. 

Under such actual circumstances, the British, with their undis- 
puted mastery of the seas, had no great difficulty in mastering 
the German colonies. German Samoa surrendered to an expedi- 
tionary force from New Zealand on August 28, 19 14. Aus- 
tralian troops occupied Herbertshohe, the seat of government 
for the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, on 
September n, and captured Kaiser Wilhelmsland, September 
24-25. In October a Japanese fleet took possession of the Mar- 
shall, Marianne, and Caroline Islands. By an arrangement 
effected in November, 1914, the islands north of the equator were 
to be administered by Japan ; Samoa, by New Zealand ; and the 
other islands south of the equator, by Australia. The German 
flag had vanished from the South Seas. 

In Africa slower progress was made in reducing the German 
colonies, for they were defended by fairly strong garrisons of 
German and native troops. To be sure, Togo, the narrow strip 
on the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, was conquered on 
August 27, 1914, by Anglo-French forces from the adjacent Brit- 
ish colony of Gold Coast and the French protectorate of Dahomey. 
But elsewhere serious obstacles were encountered. German 
Southwest Africa was invaded by forces from the Union of South 
Africa, and Luderitz Bay was occupied in September, 1914; but 
the outbreak of the Boer rebellion in the Union necessitated the 
recall of the South African troops and temporarily delayed mil- 
itary operations against the Germans. In July, 191 5, however,! 
the conquest of German Southwest Africa was carried to com-( 
pletion by General Botha. Meanwhile, a French expedition 



68 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

from Equatorial Africa and British expeditions from Nigeria had 
been penetrating into the jungles and fastnesses of Kamerun ; 
it was not until February, 1916, that they were able to overcome 
both the natural difficulties and the German commander's stub- 
born defense and to put the whole area under Anglo-French rule. 

In East Africa the German flag waved longest. Though Ger- 
man East Africa bordered on two British colonies and on Belgian 
Congo, its conquest proved difficult by reason of its inaccessi- 
bility from the hinterland and also by reason of the marked 
resourcefulness and real ability of the German commander, Gen- 
eral von Lettow-Vorbeck, and the loyal and efficient aid which 
the native troops rendered their German officers. At the end of 
1914 the coast was under blockade, but a British advance from 
South Africa waited on the crushing of the Boer rebellion and the 
subjugation of German Southwest Africa, and an attempted 
invasion from British East Africa along the shores of Victoria 
Nyanza had been checked. In 1916, after long and difficult 
campaigning on the part of a South African expeditionary force 
under the tireless and energetic leadership of General Smuts, the 
Germans were driven out of the northern and central portions of 
the colony. In June, 1917^ new offensive was begun and carried 
on relentlessly, so that in November von Lettow-Vorbeck with a 
slender column fled into Portuguese East Africa. Here, in 1918, 
incessantly chased, he made his way south nearly as far as the 
Zambesi ; then, retracing his steps, he came again in September 
into German East Africa, whence he sought refuge in northern 
Rhodesia and finally surrendered to the British on November 14, 
1 9 18. The surrender of von Lettow-Vorbeck ended the last 
phase of German overseas control. 

The conquest of the whole German colonial empire was more 
than a proof of the naval superiority of Great Britain. It was 
clear evidence of the fact that the British Empire was less a 
family relationship of mother-country and subject colonies than 
an alliance, defensive and offensive, between Great Britain and 
British commonwealths beyond the sea. Australians and New 
Zealanders who by force of arms had secured an imperial domain 
from Germany in the South Seas, and South Africans who had 
subjugated the vast tracts of German Southwest Africa and 
German East Africa, would be even less likely than their British 
kinsfolk in Europe to view with favor the return of their con- 
quests to Germany after the war ; they were now by self-interest 
as well as by sentiment thoroughly committed to the fight with 
Germany, to the settling once for all, as between Teuton and 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 69 

Anglo-Saxon, of the leadership not merely of Europe but of the 
whole world. To English-speaking peoples the globe over, it 
seemed as if the stakes in the old historic conflict for commercial 
and colonial supremacy between Englishman and Spaniard or 
between Englishman and Frenchman were pitiful indeed in com- 
parison with these mighty universal stakes of the twentieth 
century between British and Germans. 

TURKEY'S SUPPORT OF GERMANY 

For at least twenty years prior to the outbreak of the Great 
War, German influence had been steadily growing in the Otto- 
man Empire. German military officers had reorganized, trained, 
and equipped the Turkish army. German business-men had 
exploited the natural resources and trade of Turkey. German 
capitalists were constructing the Anatolian and Bagdad railways, 
which stretched from the Bosphorus to the Persian Gulf. Ger- 
man ambassadors and foreign secretaries had repeatedly posed 
as champions of the integrity of the Ottomon Empire and had 
exerted themselves on many occasions to bolster up the declining 
fortunes of the Sultan and to apologize for acts of the Turkish 
government which outraged the conscience of Christian Europe. 
In fact, by the year 1914 Turkey was regarded both politically 
and economically as a German "sphere of influence," and dis- 
tinguished German publicists, like Friedrich Naumann and Paul 
Rohrbach, were extolling the mission of Germany as the leading 
Power in a federation of " Mittel-Europa," a federation that 
would include Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and certain Balkan 
states, and would dominate the economic and political life of 
the varied peoples from the Baltic and North Seas to Bagdad 
and ports on the Persian Gulf. 

Many Englishmen had come to feel before the war that the 
scheme of a Germanized Mittel-Europa, especially the scheme 
for the Bagdad railway, was not only a promise of great economic 
gain to Germany but a threat against British ascendency in 
India and in Egypt. Russian imperialists, also, grew fearful, 
as they beheld the strengthening of German influence at Con- 
stantinople, lest their ancient dream of restoring an Eastern 
Empire under a Muscovite Tsar would never be realized. It was 
primarily against Germany's designs in Turkey and in Persia 
that Russia and Great Britain had concluded their entente in 
1907 ; and thenceforth, the Entente Powers, including France, 
had been arrayed against the Teutonic Powers in nearly all dip- 



70 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

lomatic manoeuvers involving Turkey. On most occasions the 
Teutonic Powers professed to champion the Turks, while the 
Entente Powers were represented as the enemies of Turkey. 
Such was certainly the case in the Balkan War of 1912-1913 : 
at London, Paris, and Petrograd rejoicing marked the receipt of 
news of Turkish defeats and of the shrinkage of Ottoman terri- 
tory ; regret and grief marked the receipt of the same news at 
Berlin and at Vienna. This distinction the Ottoman govern- 
ment speedily perceived ; and Enver Pasha, the most conspicu- 
ous and influential leader of the dominant Young Turk Party 
since the Turkish revolution of 1908 and the national Turkish 
hero in the Balkan war of 1912-1913, became an ardent Ger- 
manophile. Turkey, under the guidance of Enver Pasha, was 
predisposed to support Germany in the crisis of the Great War. 

Soon after the declaration of war, two German cruisers in the 
Mediterranean, the Goeben and the Breslau, took refuge, as we 
have seen, in the harbor of Constantinople. There their German 
officers and crews cooperated with German agents and with 
Enver Pasha and other Germanophile Turks in inflaming popular 
sentiment against the Allies. Some members of the Turkish 
ministry hesitated to hazard an actual war with Britain and 
Russia, but they could not act independently while their capital 
was honeycombed with German propaganda and threatened by 
two powerful German cruisers cleared for action. The officers 
and men of the cruisers refused to put to sea or to be interned ; 
the Turkish government, even if it so desired, did not have ade- 
quate means of enforcing its international obligations in this 
respect ; the Allies protested ; the Turks answered by abrogating 
the "capitulations," under winch foreigners on Ottoman soil had 
been tried by judges of their own nationality; again the Allies 
protested ; the Turks under German pressure replied by closing 
the Dardanelles to commerce, thereby cutting Mediterranean 
communication with Russia ; again the Allies protested ; and the 
Turks joyfully received a fresh batch of officers from Berlin to 
prepare them for war. 

On October 29, 1914, the Breslau, now masquerading as a 
Turkish cruiser, shelled Russian towns on the Black Sea, and 
three Turkish torpedo-boats raided the port of Odessa. Finding 
the responsible Turkish authorities unwilling or unable to make 
reparation for these hostile acts or to take steps to prevent their 
repetition, the Allied ambassadors asked for their passports and 
left Constantinople. On November 3, Russia proclaimed hos- 
tilities, and two days later Great Britain and France declared 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 71 

war against the Ottoman Empire. Turkey had definitely cast 
her lot with Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

Turkey could not be of immediate, direct military value to the 
Teutonic Powers, for from them she was separated by Bulgaria 
and Rumania, both of which were still neutral, and by Serbia, 
which was hostile. Turkish armies could not be brought to the 
Teutonic battle-lines in France or in Poland. Yet the Germans 
welcomed the support of Turkey for two reasons. In the first 
place, the Mohammedan Turks were counted upon to stir up the 
fellow-Moslem populations of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and 
India, to engage in a "Holy War" against Great Britain and 
France. In the second place, the Turkish army was expected to 
require the attention of a considerable body of Russian and 
British troops, who would thus be prevented from participating 
in the battles of Galicia and Flanders. Neither of these expec- 
tations was fully realized. The "Holy War," it is true, was 
solemnly proclaimed at Constantinople on November 15, 19 14, 
but despite some spasmodic uprisings in Morocco against French 
rule and a certain amount of general Moslem unrest elsewhere, 
in the main the Mohammedan subjects of Great Britain and 
France gave little heed to the Chief of the Faithful at Constan- 
tinople. No general insurrection ensued, and the hoped-for 
diversion from the conquest of German colonies overseas was not 
forthcoming. Nor were the Allied forces in Europe seriously 
weakened by Turkey's entry into the war. The Russians uti- 
lized such forces as they could not easily transport to Poland to 
inaugurate their campaign from the Caucasus into Armenia ; 
the British could depend largely on colonial troops to defend 
Egypt and to invade Mesopotamia ; and the Allies might even 
count on a timely Mohammedan diversion in their favor within 
the Ottoman Empire itself, for the Arabs of the Hedjaz, under their 
respected chieftain, the Sherif of Mecca, were disgusted with the 
Young Turk regime at Constantinople and were ripe for revolt. 

In one way Turkey's entry into the war was a boomerang 
against Germany. To Germany the "sphere of influence" in 
Turkey was of far greater economic and political importance 
than all her "colonies" in Africa and in the South Seas put to- 
gether. The latter, under the German flag, were an obvious and 
quick prey to Great Britain's naval superiority, but so long as 
Turkey remained out of the war the German sphere of influence 
in Anatolia and Mesopotamia was protected by the neutral 
Crescent flag. As soon as Turkey entered the war, however, 
Great Britain's naval superiority could be brought to bear upon 



72 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Germany's interests in the Near East as well as upon her interests 
in Africa and Oceanica. If German imperialists were devoted 
to a Berlin-to-Bagdad Mittel-Europa project, there were British 
imperialists whose hearts and minds were set upon a Suez-to- 
Singapore South-Asia project. The Ottoman Empire occupied 
a strategic position in both schemes. A neutral Turkey, on the 
whole, was favorable to German imperialism. A Turkey in 
armed alliance with Germany presented a splendid opportunity 
for British imperialism. 

Coincident with Turkey's entry into the war, the British for- 
mally annexed the Greek-speaking island of Cyprus, in "military 
occupation" of which they had been since 1878. On December 
17, 1 9 14, the legal status of Egypt was changed by a decision of 
the British government: "In view of the state of war arising 
out of the action of Turkey, Egypt is placed under the protection 
of His Britannic Majesty, and will henceforth constitute a British 
protectorate. The suzerainty of Turkey is thus terminated. 
His Majesty's government will adopt all the measures necessary 
for the defense of Egypt and the protection of its inhabitants and 
interests." At the same time the khedive of Egypt, Abbas II, 
who had thrown in his lot with Turkey, was deposed, and the 
Egyptian crown was given, with the title of sultan, to Hussein 
Kemal Pasha, an uncle of the khedive. Already a British force 
from India had landed at the head of the Persian Gulf, had taken 
Basra on November 23, and was preparing for an invasion of 
Mesopotamia, with Bagdad, three hundred miles up the Tigris, 
as the objective. In vain the Turks struggled against their 
foes on many fronts : their efforts to invade Russian Caucasia 
and to drive the Russians from northwestern Persia were frus- 
trated in January, 191 5, and their attacks on the Suez Canal 
failed dismally in February, 191 5. 

An opportunity of another kind was afforded the Allies by 
Turkey's entry into the war. It might now be possible to dis- 
integrate the whole Ottoman Empire and to utilize the extensive 
spoils as inducements for strengthening and enlarging the armed 
alliance against the Teutonic Powers. Here was an opportunity 
for Great Britain and France to undo the work which they had 
accomplished in the Crimean War, and by pledging Constan- 
tinople to Russia to bind their Eastern ally more closely to 
themselves. Here, too, was an opportunity for the Entente 
Powers to draw Italy into a firm alliance with themselves : Italy 
had long been angling in the troubled waters of Near Eastern 
diplomacy ; she could now be promised Albania and attractive 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 73 

imperialistic concessions in Asiatic Turkey. From Turkish 
spoils, moreover, sufficient territorial rewards might be dangled 
before the eyes of Balkan statesmen to actuate them to put aside 
their mutual jealousies, to reconstitute the Balkan League of 191 2, 
and to add the considerable weight of their joint armaments to 
the forces of the Allies. Of the Balkan states, Serbia and Monte- 
negro had the least to gain from making war on Turkey, but 
they were already serving manfully the Allied cause. Bulgaria, 
however, after conquering Adrianople in the First Balkan War, 
had been despoiled of that rich prize by the Turks in 191 3 ; now, 
if she would espouse the cause of the Allies, she might recover 
what she had lost. Greece, likewise, might be rewarded for 
timely aid by securing the Greek-speaking cities of Asia Minor, 
which were still oppressed by foreign, Turkish rule, but toward 
which the free Greeks turned ever longing eyes. A grand alli- 
ance cemented between the Balkan States, Italy, Russia, France, 
and Great Britain, would admit of the crushing not only of Tur- 
key but of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The prospect was 
alluring. 

Turkey had gone to the support of Germany in October, 1914. 
This action, however, did not serve, as the Germans expected, 
to stay the conquest of the German colonies by Great Britain. 
Rather, it widened the area which the British might master and 
the opportunity which British naval superiority could seize. 
Nay more, it offered the Allies a chance to terminate the Great 
War favorably to their own interests by a noteworthy coup in the 
Near East. 

GERMANY'S COUNTER-OFFENSIVE ON THE SEAS 

It was apparent soon after the outbreak of the Great War that 
England was mastering the seas and vast dominions beyond the 
seas. Neither rebellion within the British Empire nor the strug- 
gle on the continent of Europe was staying the rapid loss of 
German commerce, German colonies, and German "spheres of 
influence." Japan was assisting Great Britain, and to Germany 
Turkey was rapidly becoming a hindrance rather than an aid. 
Could not some counter-offensive be undertaken against the 
Mistress of the Seas, some measures that would terrify her 
merchants and paralyze her industry? Could not Teutonic 
"f rightfulness" succeed where Teutonic force failed? 

In attempting to answer these questions, the German author- 
ities from the beginning of the war utilized such weapons of 



74 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

" f rightfulness " as floating mines, naval raids on unprotected 
English coast towns, and the bombardment of populous cities by- 
Zeppelins and other aircraft. Allusion has already been made 
to the planting of mines by the Germans along the North Sea 
coasts ; these mines caused considerable loss to British and 
Allied shipping. 

Moreover, it was occasionally possible for a few very swift 
German cruisers to elude the powerful British squadrons in the 
North Sea and to conduct a sudden raid along the English and 
Scottish coasts. Thus, for example, on November 3, 1914, 
German warships threw shells at the towns of Yarmouth and 
Lowestoft; and in a second raid, on December 16, they inflicted 
a good deal of damage on three other coast towns. At Hartle- 
pool, the only one of the three towns which could be called a 
fortified place, 119 persons were killed and over 300 were 
wounded. Scarborough suffered less severely, losing eighteen 
killed, mostly women and children, and about seventy wounded. 
Whitby, the third town to be bombarded on this occasion, re- 
ported the destruction of many houses, but only three persons 
killed and two wounded. These raids called forth angry pro- 
tests from the English press, on the ground that the shelling of 
unfortified places, and the killing of unsuspecting civilians, was a 
needless barbarity and could serve no military purpose. But 
obviously the German government considered it as important 
to strike terror into the heart of the civilian as to disarm the 
soldier. 

This was probably the major purpose of the frequent attacks 
made by German aviators on cities like London and Dover, to 
say nothing of Paris and Antwerp. Bombs dropped from a 
Zeppelin or from an airplane might demolish a building or two 
and kill a few women and children, but they would hardly 
destroy extensive fortifications. Undoubtedly German air- 
raids compelled the British to maintain a large defensive air- 
force at London and thereby hampered Allied air-offensives on 
the fighting front in France, but as a rule they were spectacular 
and attracted attention out of all proportion to their real impor- 
tance. They were significant, however, in that they brought 
the Great War directly home to England's civilian population 
and aroused a national rage against the "Huns." It was the 
first time since the Norman Conquest that the soil of England 
had been violated by foreign foes ; never before had there been in 
England such enthusiastic volunteering for naval defense at 
home and for military offense overseas. 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 75 

The chief weapon of the German counter-offensive remains to 
be mentioned — the submarine. From the outset Germany 
recognized that it would be idle to risk its " supermarine " fleet in 
a conflict with the far more powerful British navy. But her sub- 
marines she could use to destroy not only belligerent warships 
but enemy merchantmen, and even neutral vessels of the latter 
sort if they were thought to carry contraband. All the Great 
Powers had fleets of submarines at the beginning of the war, but 
from the very nature of things only the Teutonic Powers found 
general use for submarines. As German warships and German 
merchantmen were speedily driven from the seas by British 
naval superiority, British submarines had little or nothing to do. 
On the other hand, German submarines now had much to do. 
France and Russia might be invaded by German armies, but the 
only way for Germany to strike directly at Great Britain was by 
means of the submarine. The inhabitants of Great Britain, to 
live, had to import large quantities of foodstuffs ; to finance 
their government and their allies in the Great War, they had to 
keep their industries going, import raw materials, and export 
manufactured goods ; to provide themselves with sufficient muni- 
tions of war to cope with militaristic Germany, they had to rely 
in part upon the United States. Hence uninterrupted sea-trade 
was essential to Great Britain's prosecution of the war. To 
most Germans it seemed as if the submarine was providentially 
placed in their hands to enable them to achieve what a Napoleon 
had not achieved, the breaking of Britain's sea power. By 
means of the submarine they would stop the flow of munitions 
from America, they would deprive England of her foreign mar- 
kets, they would halt the turning of her factory-wheels, they 
would bankrupt and starve her, they would oblige her to lift the 
blockade she had imposed on Germany, they would ultimately 
vanquish her. Germany would then regain a colonial empire 
and secure naval superiority. Thereby would the "freedom of 
the seas," in a German sense, be established. 

The Germans imagined that they could count on some aid 
from the United States in forwarding their counter-offensive on 
the seas. Early in the war the American government, like the 
governments of other neutral countries, was strenuously engaged 
in controversy with Great Britain over questions of contraband, 
blockade, and interference with mails. Most of the historic 
claims of the United States for the right of neutral trade in time 
of war had been sanctioned by a declaration drawn up at London 
in 1909 by authorities on international law, but as it had not 



76 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

been formally ratified by all the maritime Powers the United 
States could not get Great Britain to observe it in letter or in 
spirit. In fact, the British government, in its endeavors to 
"starve out" Germany, arbitrarily lengthened the contraband 
list, detained and seized cargoes in transit from America to Ger- 
many, even from America to neutral Denmark and Holland, and 
systematically intercepted and inspected neutral mail. The 
result was a notable depression in many American, as well as 
German, industries, a rising wave of ill-feeling against England, 
and the dispatch of an energetic note of protest by the United 
States to Great Britain on December 26, 1914. 

On the same day the German government contributed to the 
complications of the situation by placing under public control all 
of the food supply of the Empire. This meant that no distinction 
could henceforth be made between foodstuffs imported into 
Germany for military use and similar imports for the use of non- 
combatants. Wherefore the British government at once de- 
clared that all foodstuffs intended for consumption in Germany 
would be treated as contraband. * Neutral trade with Germany 
was thus practically prohibited, and American grievances against 
Great Britain towered higher. A test case was made with the 
steamship Wilhelmina, which reached England early in February, 
1915, from the United States, loaded with grain for Germany. 
She was seized by the local authorities and condemned by a 
British prize court. It seemed an auspicious moment for the 
launching of the German counter-offensive. 

So far the operations of German submarines had been re- 
stricted to attacks on enemy warships and on a few enemy mer- 
chantmen. Now, on February 4, 191 5, Germany announced 
that from February 18 onward the waters around the British 
Isles would be considered a "war zone," that every enemy mer- 
chant vessel found there "would be destroyed without its always 
being possible to warn the crew or passengers of the dangers 
threatening," and that "even neutral ships would be exposed to 
danger in the war zone." This proclamation heralded the 
beginning of the great German counter-offensive on the seas, 
unrestricted submarine warfare. 

Grave dangers lurked in the counter-offensive, for the sub- 
marine was a novel weapon for the purpose and one whose status 
was not at all explicitly established by international usage. 
According to recognized rules of international law the pro- 
cedure for capture of merchantmen at sea was fairly simple : 
TEemerchantman must first be warned and ordered to undergo 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 



77 



search ; if then the merchantman resisted, she might be sunk ; 
otherwise the enemy warship might place a prize crew on the 
captured merchantman and take her to port, or might sink her 
provided the safety of her passengers and crew was assured. 
But this procedure, quite applicable to an ordinary warship, was 




strikingly inapplicable to a submarine. In the first place, a sub- 
marine had to attack quickly and without warning, for its frail 
construction would make it an easy prey, if observed, even for 
merchantmen. Secondly, the crew of a submarine was so small 
that members could not be spared to constitute a prize crew on 
a captured merchantman. And thirdly, a submarine was so 
slight that it could not itself provide for the safety of the pas- 



78 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

sengers and crew of a merchantman which it might sink. To 
sink a merchantman by a first shot and to leave all persons on 
board to shift for themselves as best they could, was the only 
practicable method of ''capture" by German submarines. For 
this kind of "capture" there was absolutely no authority in 
international custom or wont. 

A twofold embarrassment now confronted the United States 
and other neutral countries. On the one hand, trade' with 
Germany was cut off by the British. On the other hand, trade 
with Great Britain was menaced by German submarines, and not 
only trade but lives of neutral citizens also. On February 10, 
191 5, the American government sent a communication to the 
German government, calling attention to the serious difficulties 
that might arise if the contemplated policy of waging unre- 
stricted submarine warfare were carried out, and declaring that 
it would hold Germany to a "strict accountability" if any mer- 
chant vessel of the United States was destroyed or citizens of 
the United States lost their lives. 

American expostulations elicited from Berlin as well as from 
London only nicely- worded "explanatory" and "supplementary" 
notes. The situation grew ever more embarrassing to neutrals. 
On the one hand, Mr. Asquith, the British premier, declared on 
March 1 that Great Britain and France, in retaliation for Ger- 
many's declaration of the "war zone" around the British Isles, 
would confiscate all goods of "presumed enemy destination, 
ownership, or origin"; no neutral vessel sailing from a German 
port would be allowed to proceed, and no vessel would be suffered 
to sail to any German port. On the other hand, Germany pro- 
ceeded to carry out her threats in the "war zone." In March, 
191 5, an American citizen lost his life in the sinking of a British 
steamship ; on April 28 an American vessel was attacked by a 
German airplane ; and three days later an assault upon an Amer- 
ican steamer by a submarine caused the death of three American 
citizens. 

Before the government of the United States had formulated 
any action in connection with these cases, the whole civilized 
world was shocked at the terrible news that the unarmed Cunard 
Line steamship Lusitania had been sunk on May 7, 1915, by a 
German submarine off Old Head of Kinsale at the southeastern 
point of Ireland, with the loss of 1195 lives, of whom 114 were 
known to be American citizens. The first feeling of horror at the 
catastrophe was succeeded in the United States by a feeling of 
bitter resentment at what was certainly a ruthless sacrifice of 



GREAT BRITAIN MASTERS THE SEAS 79 

innocent civilians. It appeared at first as if a break between the 
United States and Germany was immediately inevitable. Pres- 
ident Wilson, however, was resolved to act "with deliberation 
as well as with firmness," and there ensued a protracted inter- 
change of diplomatic notes between the American and German 
governments, interspersed now and then with new submarine 
outrages and with new crises. The United States was not the 
only neutral Power which suffered from Germany's counter- 
offensive ; the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Spain, and Latin 
America suffered serious losses, too. But the United States was 
a Great Power, and one whose friendship Germany could ill 
afford to lose. 

In spite of widespread German propaganda in America, the 
grievances of the United States against Germany came to weigh 
more heavily than those against Great Britain. Property rights 
alone were involved in the latter, and they could be redressed 
after the war in accordance with the arbitration treaty in force 
between Great Britain and the United States. Between the 
United States and Germany there was no general arbitration 
treaty, and even if there were it would be impossible to arbitrate 
the loss of human life, in addition to property, which the sub- 
marine warfare involved. Germany had counted on American 
sympathy, if not active assistance, in her counter-offensive. 
She soon found that in practice it aroused American enmity. 
How far could she go with it and still keep the United States 
neutral ? 

During the year 19 15 Germany did not press her counter- 
offensive on the seas to the utmost. She was " feeling her way" 
with neutral Powers. Yet the sinkings of Allied merchantmen 
in that experimental year were sufficient to convince the German 
admiralty that a perfectly ruthless and unrestricted submarine 
campaign would compel Great Britain to sue for peace "in six 
months at the most." Before undertaking such a final holo- 
caust, it would be best, in German opinion, to crush the British 
allies on the Continent. This done, all the resources of Germany 
and Austria-Hungary, all their raiding cruisers, all their Zep- 
pelins and airplanes, all their subtle submarines, could be brought 
to bear upon the task of disputing with Britain the mastery of 
the seas and of dominions beyond the seas. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ALLIES ENDEAVOR TO DOMINATE THE NEAR EAST 

ALLIED OPTIMISM IN THE SPRING OF 1915 

The events narrated in the three preceding chapters, occurring 
simultaneously in the autumn of 19 14 and the winter of 1914- 
191 5, gave the Allies confidence in ultimate victory. Germany 
had counted upon a speedy, decisive crushing of France and upon 
the ability of Austria-Hungary to hold the Russians in check until 
the joint forces of the Teutonic Powers could overwhelm the 
Muscovite " hordes." Germany had also scoffed at England's 
"contemptible little army" and had relied upon uprisings within 
the British Empire to prevent Great Britain from giving timely 
aid to France or Russia. All these calculations had been upset. 
France was not crushed. Austria had suffered a Russian inva- 
sion of Galicia. No serious revolt had broken out in the British 
Empire, and Britain's army in Flanders was growing less and less 
"contemptible" as the days went by. 

In the West the fighting had been taken out of the open field 
and confined to trenches, and the allied French, British, and Bel- 
gians were conducting a "war of attrition," gradually "nibbling" 
at the German lines and gradually depleting the German forces. 
In the East, it is true, the Russian invasion of Galicia had been 
offset by a Teutonic invasion of Poland ; several disastrous de- 
feats had overtaken Russian armies ; and it was already obvious 
that without adequate railway facilities, without proper training 
and equipment, and without sufficient ammunition, the Russian 
"hordes" could not immediately menace Germany. In short, 
by the spring of 191 5 it had become reasonably clear that neither 
the efficiency of the Germans nor the numbers of the Russians 
would suffice to achieve a quick victory. The Great War was to 
be a long war. It was to be an endurance-test, in which mere 
battles might play a far less decisive role than political and eco- 
nomic factors. 

A long war, an endurance-test, appealed more to the Allies than 
to the Germans. The outcome of such a struggle would depend 

80 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 81 

not upon the military might of the moment but upon collective 
national resources of men, munitions, and money. And the Allied 
Powers were conceded to be vastly superior to the Teutonic Pow- 
ers in latent resources. As Mr. Winston Churchill, the English 
statesman, put it : "It is not necessary for us to win the war to 
push the German line back over all the territory they have ab- 
sorbed, nor to pierce it. While the German lines extend far be- 
yond their frontiers, while their flag flies over conquered capitals 
and subjected provinces, while all the appearances of military 
success greet their arms, Germany may be defeated more fatally 
in the second or third year of the war than if the Allied armies 
had entered Berlin in the first year." The factors upon which 
Mr. Churchill, in common with other Allied and pro-Ally ob- 
servers, counted to insure the Entente's final victory, may be 
indicated in five brief paragraphs. 

(i) Resources of Men. The population of Germany, Austria- 
Hungary, and Turkey amounted to 140 millions, while that of 
the Entente Powers and Belgium exceeded 295 millions. Even 
this obvious disparity did not tell the whole tale, for in the latter 
figure were not included the teeming millions of India and other 
subject states of the British Empire or the population of the French 
colonies or of Japan. At t he beginning of the war, the Teutonic 
Powers, by virtue^of their elabora te mili tary preparedness, could 
put a relatively larger number of men in the field than their 
enemies ; as time went on, however, their initial advantage would 
be outweighed and obliterated by the mere weight of numbers 
which the Entente Powers could train and dispatch to the front. 

(2) Economic Resources. Even should the Allies fail to over- 
whelm the Central Empires by sheer weight of numbers, it was 
believed that the failure of Germany's economic resources would 
bestow the final victory upon the financially invincible coalition 
of London and Paris. To the student of finance elaborate statis- 
tical reviews professed to prove the inevitable bankruptcy of 
Germany and the financial solidity of France and England. Ger- 
man economists, it is only fair to remark, published similar arrays 
of figures to demonstrate the ability of Germany to endure to the 
end, thanks to the willingness of her patriotic citizens to invest in 
the government's war loans, and thanks to more efficient man- 
agement of resources. 

{■0 Naval Supremacy. With increasing frequency as the war \ 
progressed, allusion was made to the historic parallel between the 
present struggle and that of Napoleon with Britain's sea power. 
As sea power at the beginning of the nineteenth century had 






82 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

overcome invincible armies then, so it was assumed that Eng- 
land's superdreadnoughts would overcome Germany's armies in 
the twentieth century. Command of the seas enabled the Allies 
to utilize their own resources to the full, to preserve their own 
trade, to "capture" German trade, and to institute a virtual 
blockade of Germany. Germany's attempt to break the block- 
ade by means of submarines was still in its incipient stage and as 
yet promised to achieve little except to anger the United States 
and other neutral Powers. It remained to be seen whether 
German efficiency, which had already staved off a food crisis, 
could so wisely regulate the economic life of the nation, and so 
advantageously exploit the resources of Belgium, Poland, and 
Turkey, that the British navy would be unable to reverse the 
victories of German armies. 

(4) Prospect of Domestic Disturbances. In measure as the 
Germans lost hope of Moslem rebellions in India, in Egypt, and 
in Morocco, and of popular uprisings against the British and 
French governments, the Allies grew more optimistic about the 
chance of revolution within the Teutonic countries. It became 
known that a group of "Minority Socialists" in Germany was 
opposing the war and that serious mutinies were developing among 
the Czechoslovak and Jugoslav subjects of Austria-Hungary. 
It was also thought that the Arabs would rebel against the Turks, 
and that the more conservative and reasonable elements in the 
Ottoman Empire would become disgusted with Enver Pasha's 
Young Turk clique. It was believed that appeals to the cause of 
"liberty, democracy, and humanity," against Prussian "mili- 
tarism" and Turkish "barbarism" would gradually enlist the 
sympathy of the "oppressed masses" in the Central Powers and 
Turkey. Time would be required for the disillusionment of the 
Teutonic people, and time was on the side of the Allies. 

(5) Diplomacy. Allied diplomacy was supposed to be more 
adroit and more sympathetic than that of Germany. The Bal- 
kan states, because of their hereditary enmity towards the Otto- 
man Empire, and Italy, because of her traditional rivalry with 
Austria-Hungary, could readily be cultivated by the superior 
Allied diplomatists and induced to cast in their lot with the En- 
tente Powers. With such an accession of strength and resources 
to the Allies, the defeat of Germany would be a foregone con- 
clusion. 

Such were the factors which inspired Allied optimism in the 
spring of 191 5. To be sure, Germany still had the advantage of 
waging the war on "interior" lines and of utilizing more em- 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 83 

ciently and economically her available resources. But already 
France and Great Britain were taking steps, if not to unify all 
their military efforts, at least to reform and strengthen their re- 
spective internal administrations with a view to securing some 
part of the "efficiency" which Germany enjoyed. In France, as 
early as August, 1914, a non-partisan war cabinet had been 
formed under the premiership of Rene Viviani, including two 
Socialists and such well-known statesmen as Theophile Delcasse, 
Alexandre Millerand, Aristide Briand, and Alexandre Ribot. 
In Great Britain, Mr. Asquith constituted a "coalition cabinet" 
in May, 1915, including twelve Liberals, eight Unionists, one 
Labor member, and Lord Kitchener ; and David Lloyd George, 
the ablest of Mr. Asquith's co-laborers, was put in charge of a 
newly created ministry of munitions. 

In the summer of 1914, Germany had taken the offensive 
against France. By the spring of 191 5 it seemed to France and 
Great Britain that the time had arrived for an offensive on their 
part. The Balkans were a field ripening for harvest. From the 
Balkans might be inaugurated that final offensive which would 
put the Teutonic Powers decisively on the defensive. To the 
Balkans the Allies turned their attention. 

THE ATTACK ON THE DARDANELLES 

The key to the Near East was thought to be the Dardanelles, 
the long, narrow straits connecting the ^Egean and the Sea of 
Marmora. Once through the Dardanelles, a victorious Allied 
fleet would have Constantinople at its mercy, and Turkey, if not 
wholly eliminated from the war, would at the very least be cut in 
two and gravely crippled. All serious danger of Ottoman attacks 
on Egypt, Persia, or India would be obviated. The Germans 
would be deprived of any control of the Bagdad railway. The 
Russian armies in the Caucasus could be largely withdrawn and 
sent to reenforce the line in Poland. Moreover, the straits being 
opened, Russia would at last find a free outlet for her huge stores 
of grain ; and the guns and ammunition of which the Russians 
were in sore need could be freely and cheaply imported by way of 
the Dardanelles and the Black Sea, as fast as the factories of 
France, England, and America could produce them. 

The moral effect of the capture of Constantinople by the Allies 
would be tremendous. Not only would it put new life into the 
forces of France, Russia, and Great Britain ; not only would it be 
an awe-inspiring lesson to the Mohammedan millions in Egypt 



84 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and in India ; it would also, by increasing the probability of the 
Entente's ultimate victory, hasten the decision of wavering neu- 
tral nations to join the winning side. Italy was already seeking 
important concessions from Austria-Hungary as the price of her 
continued neutrality ; the Allies would presently be in a position 
to make her better offers as the price of belligerency. Most im- 
portant of all, a successful attack upon the Dardanelles would 
probably bring the Balkan states into the war on the side of the 
Entente. Both Greece and Rumania had Germanophile kings 
and military castes that were under the spell of German military 
prestige ; in both countries, however, there were popular parties 
already favorably disposed to the Allied cause, and in Greece, 
the able prime minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, was known to be 
enthusiastically pro- Ally ; only a victory at the Dardanelles was 
needed to convince Greece and Rumania that it would be safe 
for them to join the Entente. Bulgaria, smarting under the 
injuries inflicted upon her by her fellow Balkan states in the war 
of 1913 and restless under her wily King Ferdinand, was suspected 
of secret leanings toward the Central Empires * ; but in case of 
an Allied victory at the Dardanelles, Bulgaria would not dare to 
oppose the Entente Powers, for Greece, Serbia, Rumania, and the 
Allied forces at Constantinople could completely encircle and 
crush her ; the cession to her of Adrianople and Turkish Thrace 
might readily resign her to her fate. 

Forcing the Dardanelles, the Allied naval authorities had every 
reason to believe, would be a difficult and hazardous operation. 
To be sure, a British squadron had accomplished the feat in 1807 ; 
but that was long ago, and since then the ineffective, antiquated 
fortifications in the straits had been replaced by the most modern 
and scientific defensive works ; expert German advisers had di- 
rected the emplacement of formidable batteries to command the 
approaches by land and sea ; and 14-inch Krupp guns could now 
be trained on an attacking fleet. But if the hazard was great, 
the stakes to be won were still greater. 

For the sake of a momentous victory the British and French 
risked a powerful fleet in the attack on the Dardanelles. During 
February, 191 5, the warships which had been watching the en- 
trance to the straits since the outbreak of the war were reenforced 
by new arrivals, until, at the time the principal assault was de- 

1 What was then merely suspected was subsequently established by the dis- 
closure of a secret treaty concluded between Bulgaria and Austria in September, 
1914, whereby Bulgaria agreed not to enter into any alliance or arrangement with 
the Entente Powers but to attack Rumania, if Rumania, on her part, should side 
with the Allies. 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 85 

livered, there were fifteen British battleships under command 
of Vice- Admiral DeRobeck and four French battleships under 
Rear- Admiral Guepratte. Altogether the Franco-British fleet 
mounted, besides the immense 15-inch guns of the superdread- 
nought Queen Elizabeth, almost seventy 12-inch guns and an even 
greater number of secondary guns. 

On February 19, 191 5, the Allied fleet began a heavy bombard- 
ment of the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles. On the tip 
of the Gallipoli peninsula, constituting the northern side of the 
entrance, were the fortifications of Sedd-el-Bahr, and on the 
southern or Asiatic side, two and three-eighths miles opposite, 
were the forts of Kum Kale. After repeated bombardments, the 
big guns of the forts were put out of action, and, although landing 
parties were beaten off by intrenched Turks, the Allied battle- 
ships could venture early in March into the lower end of the straits 
in order to bombard the forts situated fourteen or fifteen miles 
from the entrance. These forts, Kilid Bahr on the western shore 
and Chanak on the eastern shore, commanding the channel where 
it narrowed to about three-quarters of a mile in width, were the 
cardinal defenses of the Dardanelles. Here the German advisers 
of the Turkish government had planted their 14-inch Krupp guns. 
The forts at the entrance had been mere outposts, designed to 
delay rather than to stop the invader. The decisive battle would 
be the battle for the Narrows. 

By March 18, all was ready for the supreme naval effort which 
might carry the Anglo-French fleet past the menacing Narrows 
and on into the Sea of Marmora. It was thought that the guns 
at Chanak had been silenced by a long-range bombardment con- 
ducted on previous days from the Gulf of Saros by the Queen 
Elizabeth and other British battleships. Now the Allied fleet 
steamed toward the Narrows and aimed their fire at Kilid Bahr. 
Suddenly forts which were supposed to have been dismantled 
blazed forth again, and floating mines were let loose against the 
assailants. Three large shells and a mine simultaneously struck 
the French ship Bouvet, which immediately sank with all on board. 
Another mine destroyed the British ship Irresistible. And a third 
demolished the Ocean. Meanwhile Turkish guns from shore 
batteries had set the Inflexible on fire, opened an ugly gap in the 
armor-plate of the Gaulois, and inflicted severe punishment on 
other ships. At twilight the great fleet quietly steamed out of the 
straits, followed by a salvo of parting shots from the forts which 
it had striven to annihilate. Three first-class battleships and 
more than two thousand men had been sacrificed in vain. The 



86 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



naval attack on the Dardanelles had failed. The most modern 
battleships had been proved helpless against up-to-date land 
batteries. 

Instead of admitting defeat and abandoning the Dardanelles 
campaign entirely, however, the Allies decided to disembark 




The Dardanelles Campaign, 1915 

troops on the Gallipoli peninsula in the hope that a land attack 
might succeed where the navy had failed. From March 18 to 
April 25, 1 91 5, the fleet passively awaited the arrival of troops on 
the scene, contenting itself with preventing the Turks from re- 
pairing the ruined forts at Kum Kale and Sedd-el-Bahr. It was 
a long wait, fraught with serious consequences. The Allies at 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 87 

first hoped they could prevail upon Greece and Bulgaria to fur- 
nish the necessary troops for the land attack upon the Dardanelles 
and Constantinople, but neither Power was particularly heartened 
by the Anglo-French naval failure, and both Powers made seem- 
ingly exorbitant demands as the price of their assistance. Bul- 
garia would not content herself with Adrianople and Thrace ; 
she must also obtain Kavala from Greece and Macedonia from 
Serbia. Greece would not be satisfied with Smyrna and its hin- 
terland ; she must have Cyprus, all the ^Egean islands, and half 
of Albania ; and the idea of making any cessions to Bulgaria was 
most distasteful to her. Were the Allies to grant all the requests 
of Bulgaria, they would antagonize their faithful friend Serbia ; 
were they fully to satisfy Greek ambitions, they would outrage 
those of Italy, for Italy actually held twelve Aegean islands and 
had definite designs on Albania and parts of Asia Minor. Italy, 
as a Great Power, would eventually be more of an asset to the 
Allies than Greece or Bulgaria, and Italy must not be alienated. 
Despite this difficulty, Venizelos, the Greek premier, would have 
accepted the rather vague offer of Cyprus and other territories 
and would have ceded Kavala to Bulgaria and given invaluable 
military aid to the Allies on the Gallipoli peninsula, had not King 
Constantine sternly forbidden and dismissed him from the min- 
istry. As for Bulgaria, King Ferdinand dilly-dallied, played 
politics at home and abroad, and sent no troops to Gallipoli. 

Unable to procure troops from any of the Balkan states for a 
land attack upon the Dardanelles and Constantinople, the Allies 
proceeded to collect an army of their own as best they could. 
General Joffre, still fearful lest the Germans might break through 
his own lines, would spare no troops from the Western Front. 
Russia had no means of getting forces to the Dardanelles. Great 
Britain's relatively small army at home was needed to offset the 
wastage in France. The Allies were not grasping the full signifi- 
cance of the Dardanelles enterprise ; they were most unfortu- 
nately underestimating the results both of success and of failure. 
Either they should have abandoned the whole undertaking in 
March, 191 5, or they should have moved heaven and earth to 
push it to a speedy and decisive result. They did neither. 

Late in April, 191 5, an Anglo-French expeditionary force of 
1 20,000 men under the command of Sir Ian Hamilton was at last 
ready for a land attack upon the Gallipoli peninsula. A motley 
force it was. There were a few British regulars, an Australian 
division, a New Zealand division, a detachment of Indian troops, 
a division of British Territorials, and some French colonials and 



88 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

marines. This heterogeneous aggregation, amounting in all to 
three army corps, was destined to attack a much stronger Turkish 
army, commanded by a skillful German general, Liman von San- 
ders, and ensconced in practically impregnable positions. The 
long delay had enabled the Turco-Germans to prepare a most 
redoubtable defense. 

During the last week of April, the expeditionary forces managed 
to effect landings in two different regions of the Gallipoli coast, 
one at Suvla Bay and "Anzac Cove," J on the ^Egean shore, 
north and across the peninsula from Kilid Bahr, and the other 
in the vicinity of Sedd-el-Bahr, at the tip of the peninsula. From 
the two regions it was planned that the attackers should advance 
respectively southeastwards and northwards, join forces, and 
capture Kilid Bahr from the rear. On the tip of the peninsula, 
in a three-day battle, May 6-8, the Anglo-French line made a 
supreme attempt to expel the Turks from Krithia. By dint of 
desperate infantry charges, covered by field and naval artillery, 
the Allies were barely able to advance a thousand yards. To 
their intense disappointment and chagrin they discovered that 
the terrain had been carefully prepared by expert engineers ; wire 
entanglements, concealed trenches, and hidden batteries were 
encountered at every turn. Turkish guns on the heights over- 
looking Krithia commanded the whole position and were so well 
protected that even the heavy guns of the British battleships, 
which assisted in the attack, could not disable them. In the other 
theater, the "Anzacs" fought most gallantly and heroically, but, 
though they stood their ground against savage Turkish assaults, 
they were unable to make any appreciable advance to the south 
or to the east. Meanwhile, the fleet, which had been cooperating 
with the land forces, was further weakened by the destruction in 
May of three more battleships — the Goliath, Triumph, and Ma- 
jestic — so that the British Admiralty, thinking discretion the 
better part of valor, withdrew the Queen Elizabeth and the other 
large battleships from the iEgean. Glory was added to the Brit- 
ish navy by exploits of two submarines which had passed the 
Narrows and penetrated into the Sea of Marmora, but glory was 
small recompense for the general naval failure at the Dardanelles. 

On June 4, a third offensive against Krithia was ordered by Sir 
Ian Hamilton. Five hundred yards were gained at one point, 
but an equal distance was lost at another. This battle marked 

1 Ari Burnu, called "Anzac Cove" because the Australasians landed there, the 
word "Anzac" being composed of the initials of "Australian and New Zealand 
Army Corps." 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 89 

the failure of the Allies' campaign on the tip of Gallipoli : three 
bloody battles had been fought, ammunition had been wasted in 
terrific bombardments, and some 55,000 men had been sacrificed ; 
yet the principal Turkish positions remained untaken and the 
way to Kilid Bahr blocked. The land attack on the Dardanelles 
was an even more costly failure than the naval attack. 

From February to June, 191 5, the Allies endeavored by a coup 
at the Dardanelles to dominate the Near East. In their immedi- 
ate purposes they failed : the straits were still closed ; Constanti- 
nople was still a Turkish possession ; Bulgaria and Greece evinced 
fewer signs of submitting to Allied arrangements for their future 
welfare. But as the strain between Balkan states and Entente 
Powers increased, Italy perceived an opportunity to drive a hard 
bargain with the Allies. The latter, with Italian aid, might over- 
awe the Balkans ; and thus the domination of the Near East 
would be realized, if not through conciliatory diplomatic negotia- 
tions direct with Bulgaria and Greece, at least by means of the 
might and prestige of the kingdom of Italy. Despite the failure 
of the Allies at the Dardanelles, they still had a good chance of 
dominating the Near East. Nay more, if France and Great 
Britain stubbornly maintained the defensive on the Western 
Front, and Russia pressed her offensive in Galicia, the Allies had 
a capital chance, with the added weight of Italy's strength and 
resources, of dominating all Europe. 

ITALY'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR 

The optimism of the Allies in the spring of 191 5 was shared by 
several neutral Powers, notably by Italy. The failure of Ger- 
many to crush France and of Austria-Hungary to defend Galicia 
against Russian invasion served in Italy to reawaken the Irre- 
dentist agitation for the annexation of Italian-speaking districts 
of the Dual Monarchy and to quicken imperialistic ambitions 
for a share of Balkan and Near Eastern spoils. Belligerent 
speeches by Italian patriots during the winter and early spring, 
when the general situation seemed most favorable to the Allies, 
had stimulated popular enthusiasm for war to such a degree in 
May, 191 5, that the momentum of anti- Austrian feeling carried 1 
Italy into the war. 

From the Green Book published by the Italian government to 
justify its participation in the war, from the information given out 
on the other side by the Teutonic governments, and from dis- 
closures made by the revolutionary Russian government in No- 



9 o A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

vember, 191 7, it is now possible to reconstruct at least the main 
outlines of the diplomatic manceuvers which preceded the Austro- 
Italian break. A secret treaty, it will be recalled, first negotiated 
in 1882, when Italy was full of resentment against France for 
seizing Tunis, renewed in 1887, in 1891, in 1903, and most recently 
in 191 2, bound Italy to the Central Powers in the defensive Triple 
Alliance. From what we have learned of the provisions of this 
secret treaty, it appears that if either or both of her allies, " with- 
out direct provocation on their part," should be attacked by 
another Power, Italy would be obliged to join in the war against 
the attacking Power. If either ally should be forced to declare 
defensive war against a Great Power which menaced its security, 
the other members of the Triple Alliance would either join in the 
war or "maintain benevolent neutrality towards their ally." 

At the outbreak of the Great War in August, 19 14, Italy had 
remained neutral, announcing that, since Germany and Austria- 
Hungary were engaged in an offensive war, the casus foederis did 
not exist. At the same time the foreign minister, the Germano- 
phile Marquis San Giuliano, had construed Italian neutrality as 
benevolent toward Germany. As the war progressed, however, 
and especially after the death of San Giuliano in December, 1914, 
and the accession to the foreign office of Baron Sidney Sonnino, 
in whose ancestry were both Jewish and British elements, the 
spirit of Italy's neutrality became less and less "benevolent," 
and the Italian government began to accuse Austria-Hungary 
of violating a clause of the Triple-Alliance treaty which stipulated 
that as far as the "territorial status quo in the East" was con- 
cerned, the members of the alliance "will give reciprocally all 
information calculated to enlighten each other concerning their 
own intentions and those of other Powers." "Should, however, 
the case arise that in the course of events the maintenance of the 
status quo in the territory of the Balkans or of the Ottoman coasts 
and islands in the Adriatic or the y£gean Sea becomes impossible, 
and that, either in consequence of the action of a third Power, or 
for any other reason, Austria-Hungary or Italy should be obliged 
to change the status quo for their part by a temporary or a perma- 
nent occupation, such occupation would take place only after pre- 
vious agreement between the two Powers, which would have to 
be based upon the principle of a reciprocal compensation for all 
territorial or other advantages that either of them might acquire 
over and above the existing status quo, and would have to satisfy 
the interests and rightful claims of both parties." This clause 
had been invoked by Austria-Hungary in the Turco-Italian war 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 91 

of 1911-1912 to restrict Italy's operations against Turkey. In 
December, 1914, it was invoked by Italy to justify a demand for 
''compensation" for the advantages which the attack on Serbia 
would probably give the Dual Monarchy. As "compensation" 
Italy demanded not only the port of Avlona on the Albanian 
coast, whither an Italian expedition was dispatched late in 
December, 1914, but also direct cessions of Habsburg territory 
to Italy. 

The Austro-Hungarian government, directed since January by 
Baron Burian, naturally objected to the Italian interpretation of 
the treaty, yet it could ill afford, in view of the Russian advance in 
Galicia, to alienate Italy. Negotiations were therefore carried 
on, but with the utmost procrastination on the Austrian side. At 
length, on February 21, 19 15, Italy forbade further Austrian opera- 
tions in the Balkans until an agreement should have been reached 
as to compensations ; and on March 9, Austria-Hungary acceded 
in principle to Italy's threat. The German government, which 
had consistently urged the conciliation of Italy and had sent 
Prince von Biilow to urge moderation in Italy, offered to guar- 
antee the execution of whatever terms should be agreed upon. 

The Italian demands on Austria-Hungary, as formulated finally 
on April 8, 191 5, embraced (1) the cession of Trentino up to the 
boundary of 181 1, the towns of Rovereto, Trent, and Bozen; 
(2) an extension of the eastern Italian frontier along the Isonzo 
river to include the strong positions of Tolmino, Gorizia, Gra- 
disca, and Monfalcone ; (3) the erection of Trieste into an 
autonomous state ; (4) the cession of several Dalmatian islands ; 
(5) the recognition of Italian sovereignty over Avlona, and the 
declaration of Austria-Hungary's disinterestedness in Albania 
and in the twelve ^Egean islands. Austria-Hungary absolutely 
refused the second, third, and fourth demands, and modified the 
first by reserving Bozen. Besides, Austria-Hungary was averse 
from making any cessions to Italy until the end of the war ; and she 
set up a counter-demand that Italy should promise perfect neu- 
trality in respect of herself and Germany so long as the war might 
last. The Italian government, on its side, felt that it had been 
dallied with and rebuffed by Austria and that Germany's "guar- 
antees" were not very impressive. Germany had once guaranteed 
the neutrality of Belgium and had then rebuked Great Britain 
for minding a "scrap of paper." Germany now promised to 
guarantee cessions of Austrian territory at the conclusion of 
hostilities, but if she should be defeated, as seemed probable, she 
would be in no position to fulfill her engagements, and if by chance 



92 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

she should win, she most likely would laugh at Italy's "scrap 
of paper." 

All this transpired just at the time when the Entente Powers 
were conducting their Dardanelles campaign and were encoun- 
tering serious difficulties in obtaining support from Greece and 
Bulgaria. It was a splendid opportunity for Italian diplomatists. 
The latter were in a position to utilize Allied offers to raise the 
offer of Austria, and then to utilize Austrian concessions to raise 
the offers of the Allies. Italy was apparently willing to sell to 
the highest bidder, and the Entente could bid higher than the 
Teutonic Powers. The Entente Powers could promise large 
slices of Austria to Italy without hurting themselves in the least, 
and in the Near East, in the existing emergency, they could 
promise enormous imperialistic profits. The fulfillment of the 
Entente's promises would be like that of Germany's, "at the 
conclusion of the war," but the Entente had every motive for 
keeping its word which Germany lacked, and the Entente was 
more likely in the long run to win the war than were the Teutonic 
Powers. The more protracted were the Austro-Italian negotia- 
tions, the more zealously the Allied diplomatists courted Italy 
and the harder was the bargain which Italy drove with the Allies. 

On May 4, 191 5, Italy denounced her treaty of alliance with 
Austria-Hungary. Already, on April 26, Italy had signed a 
secret agreement at London with representatives of Great Britain, 
France, and Russia, whereby she was to receive Trentino, all 
southern Tyrol to the Brenner Pass, Trieste, Gorizia, and Gra- 
disca, the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia, and all the Austrian 
islands in the Adriatic. Italy, moreover, was to annex Avlona 
and its neighborhood although she was not to object if it were 
later decided to apportion parts of Albania to Montenegro, Serbia, 
and Greece. Besides, Italy was to strengthen her hold on Libya, 
and, in the event of an increase of French and British dominion 
in Africa at the expense of Germany, she was to have the right 
of enlarging hers. Finally, Italy was to retain the twelve Greek- 
speaking islands in the iEgean and to secure on the partition of 
Turkey a share, commensurate with those of France, Great Brit- 
ain, and Russia, in the basin of the Mediterranean and more 
specifically in that part of it contiguous to the Turkish province 
of Adalia. By an additional article, "France, England, and 
Russia obligate themselves to support Italy in her desire for the 
non-admittance of the Holy See to any kind of diplomatic steps 
for the conclusion of peace or the regulation of questions arising 
from the present war." 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 93 

While this amazing treaty was being signed, Italy was prepar- 
ing for war. Before the final rupture, Austria-Hungary, unaware 
of the Entente agreement, made a last attempt to purchase Italy's 
neutrality. According to a statement made by Bethmann-Holl- 
weg, the German chancellor, on May 18, the Dual Monarchy 




offered: (1) The Italian part of Tyrol; (2) the western bank 
of the Isonzo, ''in so far as the population is purely Italian," and 
the town of Gradisca ; (3) sovereignty over Avlona and a free 
hand in Albania ; (4) special privileges for Italian-speaking sub- 
jects of Austria-Hungary; (5) "Trieste to be made an imperial 



94 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

free city, with an administration giving an Italian character to 
the city, and with an Italian university." Moreover, the Austro- 
Hungarian government accepted the previous Italian demand 
that the cessions should be made as soon as the new boundaries 
could be delimited, instead of awaiting the conclusion of the war. 
Signor Salandra, the Italian premier, was already committed to 
the Allies, and now, having tested the strength of the war-spirit 
in Italy by tentatively resigning, was so confident of popular sup- 
port that he abruptly broke off further bargaining. On the 
evening of May 23, 191 5, the Italian government announced that 
war against Austria-Hungary would begin the following day. 

Italian intervention in the war must not be regarded simply as 
the culmination of the government's haggling over patches of terri- 
tory. Italy went to war first of all because the people had been 
aroused by wild enthusiasm for a war of emancipation to redeem 
the Italian populations of Trentino and Trieste from the heredi- 
tary enemy of Italian national unity. At the same time chauvin- 
istic journals had begun to preach the doctrine that Italy as a 
great and growing Power, as the modern heir to "the grandeur 
that was Rome," must establish an hegemony of the Adriatic 
and reach out for imperial dominion in the East. While chau- 
vinists were frankly urging an aggressive war for colonial ex- 
pansion, humanitarians and liberals and radicals were exhorting 
the Italian nation to join in the defense of civilization, democracy, 
and liberty, against Austro- German militaristic imperialism. 
These three powerful sentiments — anti- Austrian nationalism, 
aggressive imperialism, and anti- German liberalism — enabled 
a majority of the Italian people to accept with approval, if 
not with jubilation, the result of the diplomatic manceuvers. 
The Socialists objected ; Giolitti and a few other pro-German 
politicians were pacifistic ; some clericals at the outset were op- 
posed to war with Catholic Austria. The opposition was com- 
posed of numbers too few and of elements too diverse to affect 
the course of events. 

The Italian declaration of war, as might have been expected, 
was received with delight in France and England, with deep re- 
sentment in the Teutonic countries. It is significant, however, 
that notwithstanding its abhorrence of Italy's "treachery," the 
German government did not declare war against Italy 1 ; prob- 
ably Germany thought that thereby the way would be left open 
for Italy in the future to desert the Entente Powers and to make 
a separate peace with Austria-Hungary. As a precaution against 
1 Italy, however, declared war against Turkey on August 21, 1915. 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 95 

such a contingency, the Allies prevailed upon Italy to adhere on 
September 5, 191 5, to the Pact of London ; and by the adherence 
of Japan on October 19, five Great Powers — Great Britain, 
France, Russia, Italy, and Japan — were then bound individually 
not to make peace except in concert. 

Italy's entry into the war added to the Allied forces a field 
army of one million men and some two million reservists, under 
the nominal command of King Victor Emmanuel, and the actual 
command of Count Luigi Cadorna, and a navy comprising four 
dreadnoughts, ten older battleships, and numerous smaller craft, 
under the direction of the Duke of Abruzzi. It was anticipated 
by publicists in Allied countries that an attack of the large Italian 
army upon Trentino and Trieste, synchronizing with a Serb offen- 
sive in Bosnia and with a big Russian thrust from Galicia, would 
effectually grind Austria-Hungary between upper and nether 
millstones and would speedily compel the Dual Monarchy to sue 
for peace. It was expected, moreover, that without lessening 
the efficacy of this major blow Italy would have troops enough 
to spare to reenforce the Allies in the Near East. Italy might 
help the Anglo-French expedition at the Dardanelles, might aid 
the Serbians, and by means of her diplomatic influence at Bu- 
charest might prevail upon Rumania to enter the war and par- 
ticipate in the division of Habsburg spoils. 

The publicists were altogether too optimistic. They failed to 
recognize the grave handicaps to the Allied cause inherent both 
in Italy's military position and in the nature of the secret agree- 
ment by which Italy's services had been secured. The secret 
agreement, as we know, promised to Italy ^gean islands and 
territory in Asia Minor which Greece coveted, and Dalmatia, 
which was peopled largely by Jugoslavs and to which for national 
and economic reasons Serbia aspired. The result was embarrass- 
ing to Allied diplomacy. The Allies were already having trouble 
enough with King Constantine of Greece, and in taking sides with 
Italy in the Graeco-Italian rivalry they were strengthening the 
pro-German Greek king against Venizelos, the pro-Ally Greek 
statesman. At the same time, they were endeavoring to satisfy 
Bulgarian ambitions by obtaining from Serbia the cession of 
Macedonia to Bulgaria, but now that Dalmatia was pledged to 
Italy the Allies had to be pretty vague in promising "compensa- 
tions" to Serbia for the great self-sacrifice they expected from 
her. The Serbian government consequently grew more intran- 
sigeant about ceding territory to Bulgaria ; Bulgaria grew more 
hostile to the Allies; and the Jugoslavs of southern Austria- 



9 6 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



/ 



Hungary, kinsfolk of the Serbians, gradually feeling that they 
were being left in the lurch by the Allies, temporarily evinced an 
unseemly loyalty to the Dual Monarchy. Italy's entry into the 
war kept Greece neutral, rendered Bulgaria hostile, and made 
Serbia and Montenegro lukewarm. As for Rumania, secret 
negotiations were known to have been carried on between that 
enterprising state and Italy, and it was confidently believed that 
Italy's declaration of war heralded Rumania's. As we shall 
see in the next chapter, however, Rumania's conduct in 191 5 
was conditioned less by Italy's declaration of war than by Russia's 
overwhelming defeat. With flanks exposed to Teutonic attacks, 
Rumania kept the peace. 

Temporary diplomatic embarrassment would not have signified 
much to the Allies had effective military support come speedily 
from the Italians. That it was not forthcoming was most dis- 
concerting to optimistic publicists, but it was not the fault of 
Italy or of the Italian people. It was the fault of nature and 




geography and of the strategic frontier which Austria-Hungary 
had cunningly held for many years as protection against a possible 
Italian attack. The boundary between Italy and Austria lay 
across precipitate snow-clad Alpine peaks, across deep narrow 
ravines, across mountain torrents and swiftly flowing streams, 
and all the highest points and most accessible passes were on the 
Austrian side. To the Italian General Staff was presented the 
problem of conducting a campaign on one of the most difficult 



ALLIES ATTEMPT TO DOMINATE NEAR EAST 97 

terrains in Europe. The Austrians required a minimum of troops 
to hold positions that both by nature and by artifice were admi- 
rably adapted to defense ; the Italians needed a maximum of 
force to take the offensive. This geographical difficulty explains 
better than anything else the seemingly long delay of the Italians 
in invading Austria. It likewise explains the unwillingness of 
the Italian government to dispatch troops to Serbia or to the 
Dardanelles. Under the circumstances, Italy undoubtedly did 
the best she could. 

General Cadorna concentrated the main strength of his armies 
at the railheads along the southeastern portion of the Austro- 
Italian frontier, for an attack in force on positions along the Isonzo 
river, just east of the border ; within a week of the declaration 
of war the Isonzo had been reached, but there the Italians were 
confronted with strongly fortified heights east of the river, from 
Monte Nero in the north to Monfalcone and the Carso plateau 
on the coast. All summer the Italians struggled bravely but 
vainly to master these heights. Meanwhile, against the middle 
sector of the Austro-Italian frontier, which is simply a north- 
ward-bulging mountain-ridge, General Cadorna sent only a com- 
paratively thin line of troops, with instructions to guard the passes 
and prevent an Austrian counter-invasion. The third, or west- 
ern, sector of the frontier was formed by the irregular triangle 
of Trentino, jutting southward into Italy. The strong popular 
sentiment demanding the liberation of the Italian inhabitants 
of Trentino, taken in conjunction with the military necessity of 
forestalling an Austrian offensive from the commanding heights 
of the district, furnished ample justification for an Italian move- 
ment against Trentino. With this object, one Italian army pene- 
trated the blunt apex of the triangle, following up the valley of 
the Adige and the basin of Lake Garda towards Rovereto, while 
small parties of Italian mountaineers assailed the mountain passes 
along both sides of the triangle, threatening Trent from the east 
and from the west. It was slow and difficult campaigning, and 
great or decisive results were not speedily manifest. 

Early in the spring of 191 5 the Allies endeavored to domi- 
nate the Near East. Their first attempt — the naval attack on 
the Dardanelles — had failed. Then their efforts to obtain mili- 
tary assistance from Greece and Bulgaria had been fruitless. 
Their next attempt — the land attack on the Gallipoli peninsula 
— had netted them no considerable gain. Then they had pre- 
vailed upon Italy to enter the war. But Italy could not spare 



q8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

troops from her own difficult frontiers for immediate operations 
in the Near East. At the outset the domination of the Near East 
had seemed to the Allies a relatively easy, minor affair. By the 
summer of 191 5 it had assumed a major importance but had 
enormously increased in difficulty. Could the Allies dominate 
the Near East ? There was still a chance. 

Perhaps, though, it was not necessary for the Allies to domi- 
nate the Near East. With intense pressure exerted simultaneously 
by Russia and by Italy against the Dual Monarchy, the quick- 
est and best way of defeating Germany might he in the collapse 
of Austria-Hungary rather than in the fate of the Ottoman Em- 
pire and the Near East. To that end it was imperative, however, 
that Russia as well as Italy should fight victoriously. The sum- 
mer of 19 1 5 beheld Russia in retreat. It was a critical time. 



CHAPTER VI 

RUSSIA RETREATS 

MACKENSEN'S DRIVE: THE AUSTRIAN RECOVERY OF 

GALICIA 

Up to the end of April, 191 5, the Russian situation seemed 
most promising to the Allies. The Grand Duke Nicholas had 
failed to invade East Prussia, but he had successfully defended 
Warsaw and other fortified positions in Russian Poland against 
repeated Austro-German assaults, while in Galicia he had con- 
ducted a brilliant offensive. The Carpathian passes and the 
fortresses of Lemberg, Jaroslav, and Przemysl were in his posses- 
sion. Cracow was not far from his advanced lines along the 
Biala river. All this had been achieved by the Russians during 
the autumn of 1914 and the winter of 1914-1915. Surely, 
sufficient time had elapsed to enable the full utilization of Russia's 
vast reserve of man-power, and the Allies naturally expected 
decisive results in the campaign to be waged on the Eastern Front 
during the summer of 191 5. The "military experts" of English 
and French journals optimistically debated the question whether 
Silesia or Hungary would constitute the field of the final vic- 
tories. And the imminent entry of Italy into the war on the 
side of the Allies promised to complete the dissolution of the 
Dual Monarchy, so gloriously begun by Russian prowess. 

In a way the campaign of 191 5 on the Eastern Front was 
decisive, but it was decisive in a manner wholly unforeseen by 
the Allies. In the Allies' calculations, too much emphasis had 
been put upon man-power and not enough upon machine-power, 
too much importance had been attached to numbers and not 
enough to efficiency. In an earlier chapter * it has been pointed 
out that the Russians were fearfully handicapped by a clumsy, 
corrupt government, by poor means of communications, and by 
a woeful shortage of supplies, and that the Germans not only 
had plentiful supplies, excellent railways, and a phenomenal 

1 See above, p. 54. 
99 



ioo A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

military organization, but also were in a geographical position 
which permitted them, as soon as the fighting on the Western 
Front assumed the character of trench-warfare, to transfer large 
forces with dispatch and efficiency to the Eastern Front. But, 
above all, Russia was predominantly an agricultural country, 
while Germany was a veritable hive of manufacturing and in- 
dustry ; and it cannot be stated too insistently that the Great 
War was a war of machines, that a highly industrialized State 
was bound to enjoy a tremendous advantage when pitted against 
a peasant-state. 

All winter long the factories of Germany had worked day and 
night, turning out guns and howitzers and airplanes and rifles 
and bombs and shells, preparing with skill and ingenuity for a 
great day of reckoning with the Russians. For the Russians 
no such preparedness was possible. More men might be brought 
up, but what could mere men do empty-handed? Guns and 
ammunition could be supplied in relatively small quantities by 
Russian factories, and Russia geographically was almost cut 
off from foreign assistance: during the winter of 1914-1915 the 
English and French could ship no supplies to Archangel or other 
White Sea ports because of ice, and none to Black Sea ports 
because of the Turks ; supplies from Japan and the United States 
could be brought only over sea and then over thousands of 
miles of a single rickety railway. 

So it is explicable to us now, though it then amazed and 
startled the Allies, that just when Italy entered the war, the 
Russian armies, instead of continuing their offensive, were 
suddenly put on the defensive and were compelled hurriedly 
to retreat from Galicia. With marvelous secrecy and speed 
Austro-Hungarian and German armies, aggregating at least 
two million men, had been concentrated in April, 191 5, for 
a prodigious blow in Galicia. In Hungary the armies of General 
Boehm-Ermolli and General von Linsingen were ready for a 
new assault upon the Carpathian passes. In Bukowina, Gen- 
eral von Pflanzer was prepared to resume his advance into south- 
eastern Galicia. The main strength of the Austro-German 
concentration, however, was directed against the advanced 
Russian line in western Galicia along the Donajetz and Biala 
rivers from the Vistula through Tarnow to Gorlice and the 
Carpathians: here were the Teutonic armies of General von 
Woyrsch, the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, and General von 
Mackensen, the guiding genius of the whole Galician movement. 
These armies were provided with at least 1500 heavy guns, 



RUSSIA RETREATS ioi 

thousands of lighter field-pieces, and unlimited supplies of am- 
munition. 

By sending Linsingen into the Carpathian passes to threaten 
Stryj and the railway to Lemberg, Mackensen kept the Russians 
in uncertainty as to the point at which the principal attack was 
to be delivered, if indeed the Russians realized at all the grave 
danger in which they stood. Then quickly, on May i, 191 5, 
the main Austro-German attack began along the Biala river 
with an artillery bombardment of unprecedented magnitude. 
The opposing Russian trenches were blasted out of existence, 
and on the next day Mackensen occupied Gorlice and Tarnow. 
After their first reverse in western Galicia, the Russians fell 
back some twenty miles to the eastern bank of the Wisloka. 
From this line, too, despite desperate resistance, they were 
dislodged on May 7. Dukla Pass, now menaced from both 
sides, was abandoned, and large bodies of fugitive Russian troops 
were made captive. By the middle of May the Russians were 
defending the line of the San in central Galicia. 

The battle of the San, one of the most momentous engage- 
ments of the war, began on May 15 with a Russian counter- 
attack, and ended two days later with the Austro-Germans 
crossing the river at Jaroslav, under the personal observation 
of the German Emperor. Przemysl, farther south on the San, 
held out until June 2. Meanwhile, Linsingen, striking north 
through the Carpathians, captured Stryj on June 1 and advanced 
across the Dniester. Although Linsingen was temporarily 
checked by General Brussilov, the Austro-German advance 
continued to make headway. On June 20, Mackensen captured 
Rawaruska, north of Lemberg. Mackensen's victory at Rawar- 
uska rendered Lemberg untenable and compelled the Russians 
to evacuate the strong line of lakes, river, and marshes which 
constituted the "Grodek position," just west of Lemberg. On 
June 22 the Austrians under General Boehm-Ermolli triumphantly 
reentered the city which the Russians had taken nine months 
before. Trie fall of Lemberg may be taken as the crowning 
achievement of Mackensen's great drive. The Russians had 
been driven out of the Carpathian passes in headlong rout; 
Tarnow, Jaroslav, Przemysl, and Lemberg had been reconquered ; 
and within an incredibly brief space of time the Russians had 
been all but expelled from Galicia (they still held a strip of eastern 
Galicia, including Sokal, Brody, and Tarnapol). During 
June alone the Teutonic forces captured 145,000 prisoners, 80 
heavy guns, and 268 machine guns. In recognition of his brilliant 



102 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

success, Mackensen was appointed a Field Marshal. Archduke 
Frederick, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, was simi- 
larly honored. 

Mackenseri's honors were deserved. In less than two months 
he had undone what had taken the Russians nine months to do. 
Moreover, with combined German and Austrian armies, he had 
succeeded where the Austrians alone had failed. Thereby 
was the Austro-German alliance cemented. The Habsburg 
Emperor received back his "lost province" from the hands of 
a German general, and thenceforth the Dual Monarchy was 
absolutely dependent upon the military support and dictation 
of the German General Staff. The recovery of Galicia was of 
incalculable benefit to the Teutons not only for sentimental 
and moral reasons but also for economic and political reasons. 
The one substantial conquest of the Allies was lost, and with it 
were lost oil-wells, mines, and other natural resources that 
were greatly needed by the Germans ; with it, too, was lost 
any immediate chance of bringing Rumania into the war on the 
side of the Allies. The Teutonic recovery of Galicia rendered 
Italy's ultimate success in Istria and Trentino slower and more 
problematical ; at the same time it guaranteed the security of 
the Hungarian grain-fields and appeased Count Tisza, the Hun- 
garian premier. It was to have far-reaching effects upon the 
diplomatic duel then proceeding between Teutons and Allies 
in the Balkans. 

But the most important benefit which the resources of Galicia 
conferred immediately upon the Teutons was strictly military. 
It exposed Russian Poland to an attack on both flanks. Macken- 
sen's Drive was but a phase of a grandiose scheme to put Russia 
entirely out of the war. The German plan of campaign in Au- 
gust, 1 91 4, had been to crush France and then to turn against 
Russia. Failing to crush France, the German General Staff 
in April, 191 5, had altered their plan; they were now going to 
overwhelm Russia and then turn against France. 



HINDENBURG'S DRIVE: THE GERMAN CONQUEST OF 

POLAND 

As soon as Mackensen had cleared the Russians out of the 
greater part of Galicia, Field Marshal von Hindenburg launched 
a gigantic offensive against them in Poland. " Hindenburg's 
Drive," as the movement was popularly called, was the mightiest 
effort yet put forth in any theater of war. Its aim was obviously 



RUSSIA RETREATS 



103 



(1) to push the Russians back to a safe distance from Galicia 
and East Prussia, (2) to conquer Russian Poland, which the 
Teutonic coalition desired for military, economic, and political 
reasons, and (3) either to shatter the Russian field armies com- 
pletely, or to drive them in a badly battered condition to a strate- 
gically disadvantageous position where they would be obliged 
to remain comparatively inactive. 



EASTERN BATTLE FROXT 
1915 




^Belgrade 



To follow the course of Hindenburg's Drive, the reader must 
grasp the cardinal significance of Poland's geographical situation 
and of her railway system. Russian Poland, it must be 
remembered, was a blunt wedge inserted between German East 
Prussia and Austrian Galicia; and just as the Russians at the 



104 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

beginning of the war had recognized that they could not safely 
advance on Berlin until the Teutons had been expelled from 
East Prussia or Galicia or both, so now Hindenburg fully appre- 
ciated the fact that a German offensive simultaneously begun 
from Galicia and from East Prussia would imperil the whole 
Russian position in Poland. The first objectives of such an 
offensive would be the side of a westward-pointing wedge of rail- 
ways — the most important means of communication for the 
Russian armies in the field. Of this sharp railway wedge, War- 
saw, the capital of Russian Poland, was the apex ; the northern 
side was the railway running northeast from Warsaw through 
Bialystok, Grodno, Vilna, and Dvinsk to Petrograd ; the southern 
side, the railway extending southeast from Warsaw through 
Ivangorod, Lublin, Cholm, Kovel, and Rovno to Kiev. Be- 
tween the northern and southern sides, the only useful railway 
links behind Warsaw were d) from Bialystok to Cholm, by way 
of Brest-Litovsk, and (2) from Vilna to Rovno. 

The importance of defending Warsaw and its converging rail- 
ways was fully realized by the Russian General Staff. The city 
itself was strongly fortified, and to the north and northeast a 
line of fortresses — Novo Georgievsk, Pultusk, Ostrolenka, 
and Ossowietz — made the natural line of the Narew river an 
artificially stronger protection against any attack from East 
Prussia aimed at the northern side of the railway-wedge ; while 
to the southeast the broad fine of the Vistula with its heavy 
fortifications at Ivangorod had been deemed sufficiently strong 
to repel a flanking movement from the southwest. It was 
reassuring that Hindenburg in his two earlier offensives * in 
Russian Poland had been unable to penetrate beyond these 
major lines of defense. 

Late in June, 191 5, just after the fall of Lemberg and the loss 
of most of Galicia, the Russians were still in possession of the 
railway salient centering in Warsaw. Their long battle-line 
stretched from W r indau on the Baltic southward in front of 
Kovno and Grodno ; bent westward through Ossowietz, Lomza, 
Ostrolenka, and Przasnysz ; curved southward again in front 
of Pultusk, Novo Georgievsk, and Warsaw; and swept south- 
east near Radom, Krasnik, Zamosc, Sokal, Brody, and Tarnapol. 

But already the blackest kind of storm-clouds were gathering 

on the whole Russian horizon. Mackensen's Drive in Galicia 

had served to divert the attention and chief energies of the 

Russians to that quarter, and Hindenburg utilized the diversion 

1 See above, pp. 50-52. 



RUSSIA RETREATS 105 

to strengthen the whole Teutonic battle-line from the Baltic to 
the Vistula. It is estimated that, including Mackensen's forces 
in Galicia, not less than forty-one German and twenty-six Aus- 
trian army corps were disposed for the crowning stroke. Russia 
could produce equal numbers, but she did not have the rifles, 
and above all she did not have the heavy guns and the shells. 
Hindenburg's armies were equipped for sledge-hammer blows. 

The recovery of Galicia made it possible for Hindenburg to 
direct his great offensive quite differently from the manner in 
which he had conducted his earlier and smaller offensives in 
Russian Poland. Warsaw would no longer have to be assailed 
from the west ; it could now be flanked from the southeast. 
Mackensen's Drive would be merged into Hindenburg's Drive. 
In fact, in the last week of June, Field Marshal von Mackensen, 
leaving General von Pflanzer to complete the reconquest of 
easternmost Galicia, turned the main group of armies under 
his command northward and crossed the border into Russian 
Poland. By the middle of July he himself had captured Zamosc 
and advanced to within ten miles of Cholm on the southern side 
of the Polish railway-wedge, while farther west his lieutenant, 
the Archduke Joseph, took Krasnik and threatened the same 
railway at Lublin, and still farther west another lieutenant, 
General von Woyrsch, obtained Radom and drove the Russians 
back on their fortress of Ivangorod. 

Simultaneously the northern groups of German armies began 
to press the Russians. All the way from Novo Georgievsk to 
Kovno the pressure was hourly intensified. On July 14, a Ger- 
man army captured the town of Przasnysz and crossed the Narew 
near Pultusk. In the extreme north, Windau fell on July 20 
and the Germans advanced toward Riga. At the south it was 
the same story. On July 28 Woyrsch forced the passage of the 
Vistula between Warsaw and Ivangorod, and on the next day 
Mackensen cut the Warsaw-Kiev railway between Lublin and 
Cholm. 

The simultaneous attacks on the northern and southern sides 
of the Polish railway- wedge, and the interruption of rail com- 
munication toward the southeast rendered the position of the 
Russian center at Warsaw and Ivangorod extremely precarious. 
At any moment the Teutonic armies might bite into the salient 
behind Warsaw, and the Russian center would then be caught 
between the jaws of the great German offensive. The Grand 
Duke Nicholas, realizing this peril, chose to sacrifice the city 
of Warsaw and the fortress of Ivangorod. With feverish haste 



106 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

guns and supplies were dragged out of the doomed places, and 
on August 4 the Russians evacuated both Ivangorod and War- 
saw. On the morning of August 5, 191 5, a German army under 
the command of Prince Leopold of Bavaria entered the Polish 
capital. 

The fall of Warsaw marked the success of the first phase of 
Hindenburg's Drive ; within a month the Russians had been 
forced to abandon the apex and western sections of their rail- 
way-wedge. An isolated garrison at Novo Georgievsk, it is 
true, held out for a fortnight longer ; but the main body of the 
Russian center during the first week of August raced back madly 
toward eastern Poland. For a time it seemed as though the 
bulk of the Russian field army would be entrapped. But the 
able generalship of the Grand Duke Nicholas and the stubborn 
defense of Ossowietz, which guarded the northern flank of the 
retreating center, enabled the Russians to preserve some form 
and order in their ranks. 

Despite the loss of Warsaw, the converging point of the main 
northern and southern railways in Poland, it might still be possible 
for the Russians to maintain communications between the major 
portions of these railways by means of the connecting link through 
Brest-Litovsk. This, in fact, was the purpose of the secondary 
line of Russian defense, to hold the railways from Petrograd 
and Riga, through Dvinsk, Vilna (protected by Kovno), Grodno, 
Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Kovel, and Rovno, to Kiev. If the 
Russians could hold this fine, they would be in good defensive 
position from which in course of time they might start a successful 
counter-offensive. This line the Russians were holding by the 
middle of August. 

The second phase of Hindenburg's Drive consisted of efforts 
to drive the Russians from their secondary line before they had 
time to organize its defense. In the far north of the long battle- 
line the Teutonic invaders encountered the most stubborn resist- 
ance and, though they reached the Diina river, they were unable 
to capture either Dvinsk or Riga. At Riga a desperate attempt 
to land a marine expedition was foiled on August 20 by a naval 
victory of the Russians over the Germans in the Gulf. But 
the more southern parts of the secondary fine speedily proved 
as untenable as the Warsaw line. 

Already, on August 17, the Brest-Litovsk line was threatened 
both to the north and to the south. To the north, the fortress of 
Kovno, inadequately prepared against attack, was surrendered 
by a Russian general who subsequently was brought up on charges 



RUSSIA RETREATS 



107 



of criminal neglect of duty. In the south, the line was menaced 
by Mackensen's continued advance east of Cholm toward Kovel. 
On August 18 a German force cut the railway between Bialystok 
and Brest-Litovsk. Ossowietz fell five days later. Both Bialy- 
stok and Brest-Litovsk were evacuated on August 25, and Grodno 
on September 2. In vain the Russians launched a counter- 
offensive near Tarnapol, in Galicia. In vain was their desperate 
and imprudent defense of the important railway junction of 
Vilna. Here, while they heroically held in check the German 
advance from Kovno, other German armies were concentrating 
north, south, and east. Finally, on September 18, the Russians 
evacuated Vilna and by means of brilliant holding battles man- 
aged to extricate themselves with the greatest difficulty from an 
impossible position. 

With the fall of Vilna, the whole secondary line of Russian 
defense, except the northernmost sector from Riga to Dvinsk, 
was in Teutonic hands. By the first of October, ioi5,Hinden- 
burg's Drive had come virtually to a standstill, and the Russians 
rested from their exhausting and demoralizing retreat. The 
Russian right wing now held the Diina river from Riga to Dvinsk 
and the lake region from Dvinsk to Smorgon (on the Vilna-Minsk 
railway) ; the center maintained an almost straight north-and- 
south line from Smorgon to the Pripet marshes east of Pinsk; 
the left wing was fighting for possession of the Lutsk-Dubno- 
Rovno fortress-triangle near the Galician border and was annoy- 
ing the Austrians in the vicinity of Tarnapol. All Poland, 
together with most of Courland and a strip of Lithuania, was a 
Teutonic conquest. 

REVIVAL OF POLITICAL UNREST IN RUSSIA 

The rapid expulsion of the Russian armies from Galicia and 
Poland produced a marked effect upon the political situation 
in Russia. No sooner was Mackensen's Drive well under way 
than patriots began to speak out against the incompetence of 
the military leaders and the inefficiency and corruption of the 
government; and as Mackensen's Drive broadened into Hin- 
denburg's, these voices of protest grew more numerous and 
louder and angrier. On all sides demands were made for an 
early assembling of the Duma and the formation of a really 
"representative" national government. 

An autocracy, such as the Russian, might endure through 
long periods of piping peace ; it might even acquire new vigor 



108 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and lease of life by means of military victory. But military 
defeat was almost certain to discredit, if not to destroy, it. In 
the last war in which Russia had been engaged — the Russo- 
Japanese War of 1 904- 1 905 — foreign defeats of the Tsar's 
troops had been a prelude to domestic revolts against the Tsar's 
government. Now, ten years later, would Russian history 
repeat itself? That was the question. 

In one important respect the situation in 1914-1915 was 
fundamentally different from that in 1904- 1905. The Great 
War had a significance to the Russian people far greater than 
the Russo-Japanese War. The latter, strictly speaking, had 
never been a popular war: it had been fought against "yellow 
men" in far-off eastern Siberia, and its stakes had been the 
Tsar's imperialistic domination over Korea and China ; its re- 
verses had been defeats of the Tsar rather than of the Russian 
people. 

The Great War, on the other hand, was distinctly a national 
war which appealed alike to the reason and to the imagination 
of the Russian people : it was being fought at home to defend 
fellow-Slavic states from Teutonic imperialism ; and in the 
alliance between the Tsar and the democracies of France, Italy, 
and Great Britain, Russian liberals perceived a means of working 
in their country a reformation without a revolution. Early 
in the war, all the political parties of Russia, save only an extreme 
group of Social Democrats, had pledged unanimous and cordial 
support to the Tsar's government. 

Nevertheless no country can suffer as Russia suffered from 
May to September, 1915, without a strong reaction. The crowds 
of homeless peasants pouring eastwards along every highway, 
the troops tattered and torn and driven backwards frequently 
in confusion, the endless stream of wounded, were most oppressive 
reminders of a huge national calamity. The mere problem of 
relief, to say nothing of the problem of preparing new defensive 
positions, was enough to strain the capacity of the country to 
the utmost. The refugees alone by the first of October were 
estimated at two millions. These men had enormous distances 
to travel on foot, and shelter had to be provided along the roads 
as well as relief at the end of the journey. Of the armed forces 
the casualties were appalling. It was estimated in October, 
191 5, that to date Russia had lost half a million men killed, a 
million wounded, and another million in prisoners, — a frightful 
loss exceeding two and a half million able-bodied young Russians. 
Worse than all else, there was some justification for the popular 



RUSSIA RETREATS 109 

impression that much of this loss and most of its attendant 
miseries might have been prevented if the Tsar's ministers and 
agents had been as solicitous for their country's welfare as for 
court-favor and their own pockets. 

Already in June, following Mackensen's Drive, but before 
the full extent of the Russian disaster was manifest, Premier 
Goremykin had so far yielded to popular criticism of the govern- 
ment as to dismiss several officials of proved inefficiency or 
corruption. Makarov, the unpopular minister of the interior, 
was succeeded by the more liberal Prince Cherbatov ; and Gen- 
eral Soukhomlinov, the boastful and thoroughly dishonest min- 
ister of war, was compelled to make way for General Poli- 
vanov. These and other changes were in the right direction, 
but reform was not drastic enough to satisfy popular critics. 
And as Hindenburg's Drive succeeded Mackensen's, popular 
unrest and criticism increased. 

On August 1, 191 5, the anniversary of the outbreak of war, 
the Duma was convened to listen to speeches, at once inspiriting 
and apologetic, by Rodzianko, president of the Duma, and by 
Premier Goremykin. In the eloquent opening address of 
Rodzianko, two themes were dominant. First, he gave voice 
to the tremendous loyalty and patriotism of the Russian people, 
and expressed his belief that "the steel breasts of her sons" 
would unfailingly' protect "Holy Russia" from the enemy. 
However, and tins was his second theme, the government must 
collaborate with the people in a more democratic spirit. "A 
change of the spirit itself and of the administration of the exist- 
ing system is necessary." The premier seemed to meet Rod- 
zianko halfway, for he declared it his policy "to unite in a single 
institution and materially to extend the participation of the 
representatives of legislative assemblies, public offices, and 
Russian industry, in the business of supplying the army with 
munitions and in the coordination of measures for the feeding 
of the army and the country." 

The central feature of Premier Goremykin's plan to enlist 
the cooperation of the nation by the creation of advisory boards 
including experts and delegates from the towns, from the zem- 
stvos, from the Duma, and from the Council of the Empire, to 
assist the ministers of war, commerce, communications, and 
agriculture, was readily assented to by the Duma. The Pre- 
mier's concessions were not enough, however, to satisfy the more 
democratic of die nation's representatives, who demanded that 
the ministry itself should be reorganized so as to cooperate 



no A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

more closely with the Duma. To this course the liberals were 
impelled not so much by the actual German victories as by 
amazing revelations of the corruption in Russian officialdom. 
It became known that German influence was at work in Petrograd 
offices as well as on Polish battlefields. It was astounding 
that various Russian banks under German manipulation were 
endeavoring to "corner" certain commodities and hamper the 
manufacture of munitions for the Russian army, that the Putilov 
Armament Company, half of whose stock was controlled by 
Krupp, was dismissing workmen or limiting them to a five-hour 
day, and that the Russian ministry was taking no effective 
steps against these abuses. 

Late in August, 191 5, the leaders of the moderate groups in 
the Duma finally agreed upon a program of reforms ; the 
first week in September witnessed the organization of a bloc, 
including all the groups of the Duma with the exception of the 
Reactionaries at one extreme and the Social Democrats at the 
other, on a platform calling for (1) the reconstruction of the 
ministry with a view to the appointment of persons able to com- 
mand the nation's confidence, (2) the adoption of a governmental 
program calculated to reconcile discontented nationalities and 
conciliate aggrieved classes, (3) the reform of local adminis- 
tration, (4) the punishment of criminally inefficient commanders 
and officials, and (5) the vigorous prosecution of the war. Pro- 
fessor Paul Milyukov, the leader of the group of Constitutional 
Democrats, became the spokesman of the reform movement. 

Here obviously was the golden opportunity for the Tsar to 
adopt a moderate program of political reform and thereby 
to heighten the loyalty to his person and the enthusiasm for 
the war which, despite the most painful military reverses, still 
characterized the Russian body-politic. For a brief moment it 
appeared as though the Tsar understood the situation and was 
resolved to act upon it. On September 5, 191 5, in the darkest 
hour of Russian defeat, the Tsar signed an army order announcing 
that he himself had taken supreme command. 1 "To-day I have 
taken supreme command of all the forces of the sea and land 
armies operating in the theater of war. With firm faith in the 
clemency of God, with unshakable assurance in final victory, 
we shall fulfill our sacred duty to defend our country to the last. 

1 The order transferred the Grand Duke Nicholas to the Caucasus. Subse- 
quently the action of the Tsar appeared in a less favorable light. The Grand Duke 
Nicholas was a very able general, and his removal was later interpreted as the 
result less of the Tsar's patriotic initiative than of a sinister court intrigue. See 
below, p. 226. 



RUSSIA RETREATS in 

We will not dishonor the Russian land." By the appointment 
of the popular General Alexeiev as chief of staff, the new gener- 
alissimo gave sign to the whole Russian people that so far as the 
Autocrat himself was concerned German intrigue and Russian 
corruption would not prevail against his purpose to wage the 
war to a triumphant end. 

As the event proved, the Tsar understood only the military 
aspect of the difficult situation in which Russia found herself. 
The German Drive speedily came to a standstill, and the Tsar, 
taking undeserved credit to himself for this surcease of imminent 
military danger, promptly shut his ears to the reforming clamor 
in the Duma and throughout the country. The reactionaries 
breathed more freely, and a certain sullenness possessed the 
souls of the liberals. It was a crisis whose distant effects no 
foreigner and hardly any Russian fully perceived. 

Scarcely had the progressive bloc formulated its program of 
reform when an imperial ukase was issued, September 16, un- 
expectedly proroguing the Duma. Protests were voiced through- 
out the country, especially in Moscow, where a congress of the 
zemstvos was in session, against this arbitrary exercise of the 
Tsar's prerogative. Yet this was only the beginning of a pro- 
nounced political change in Russia, guided by the autocrat 
and his ministers, not toward reform and democracy, but 
straight in the direction of unqualified reaction. Early in 
October Prince Cherbatov was superseded as minister of the 
interior by Alexis Khvostov, a member of the party of the Ex- 
treme Right in the Duma, who declared emphatically and re- 
peatedly that "we must strengthen the machinery of authority." 
One ministerial change followed another during the autumn and 
winter, always more reactionary, until on February i, 1916, 
the very acme of reaction was reached with the retirement of 
the octogenarian premier Goremykin and the succession to the 
chief ministry of Boris Stunner, who was known to be not only 
an ultra-conservative and an oppressive landlord but a man of 
German descent, and who besides was reputed to be pro-German 
in his personal sympathies. 

Around the German conquest of Galicia and Poland in the 
summer of 191 5, and even more around the unwillingness or 
inability of the Tsar's government in the ensuing autumn and 
winter fully to understand the resulting feelings and emotions 
of the Russian people, were gradually gathering storm-clouds 
of popular misery and popular discontent. Russian losses were 
already greater than those of any other country; Russians 



H2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

had bled and died more numerously than any other nationality. 
Yet what had it all signified? The loss of Russia's one conquest 
and the loss of her richest provinces, the adjournment of the 
Duma, and the rise of Boris Sturmer ! The great bulk of the 
Russian people were still enthusiastic about the war and still 
resolved to pour out treasure and blood to win it. But they 
were coming to care less for the winning of provinces than for 
the winning of political and social freedom. They still respected 
the Tsar, but against his corrupt and inefficient reactionary 
ministers they were growing bitter. The storm-cloud of revolu- 
tion, no bigger in September, 191 5, than a man's hand, loomed 
gradually larger throughout 1916, until by the end of the year 
it promised to overspread the whole Russian sky. 

Revolution in Russia would be bound to have marked effects 
upon the fortunes of the Great War. As yet, however, in the 
autumn of 1915 revolution was not menacing, and in Allied 
countries fears of Russian defection were not expressed. It 
was generally recognized that for some time to come Russia 
would be quite unable to recover Poland, much less to threaten 
Vienna or Berlin. The "tidal wave" was stayed. But the 
Allies did not yet despair of ultimate aid from Russia. Russia 
was not crushed, and even if the Germans should overwhelm 
her and precipitate revolution and chaos in Eastern Europe, 
they would still have to deal on their Western Front with France 
and Great Britain. 

FAILURE OF THE ALLIES TO RELIEVE RUSSIA 

At the Marne, in September, 1914, France and Great Britain 
had administered a decisive defeat to Germany. In May, 191 5, 
Italy had entered the war on the side of the Entente Powers. 
In view of these facts, it may seem strange that from May to 
September, 1915, Germany should have been able to win a series 
of spectacular victories in Russia, driving her Eastern enemy 
out of Galicia and Poland and out of a large section of Lithuania, 
and threatening Russia's internal order and security. 

The story of German successes against Russia could doubtless 
have been differently told if in 19 15 the Italians had been able 
to dispatch large forces to the Balkans and simultaneously to 
capture Trieste and thence march towards Vienna. In that 
case Rumania would probably have entered the war immedi- 
ately on the Allied side ; and Germany, instead of being free to 
chastise Russia, would have been obliged to come to the assist- 



RUSSIA RETREATS 113 

ance of her own ally, Austria-Hungary, encompassed on three 
sides by enemies and struggling for her very existence. But 
the Italians, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, 1 were held 
back by a most difficult terrain, and they did well in 191 5 to 
reach the Isonzo : they could spare no troops for a Balkan ex- 
pedition and they not so much as threatened Trieste. Under 
the actual circumstances, Rumania preserved a troubled neu- 
trality ; Austria-Hungary was not seriously menaced on any 
side ; and Germany could devote her energies to offensive, rather 
than defensive, war. 

But, even so, the fate of Russia was not wholly dependent 
on an Italian drive. On a 600-mile Western Front were French 
and British veterans of the victories of the Marne, the Aisne, 
and Flanders, and a forward movement of these valorous hosts 
in 191 5 might serve independently to bring respite and relief 
to hard-pressed Russians on the Eastern Front. This had been 
the chief of Allied calculations, that Germany, compelled to 
stand on the defensive in the West, would be unable to take the 
offensive in the East. 

Such calculations were purely academic. Despite a lessening 
of German numbers on the Western Front, a great Allied advance 
in France and Belgium failed to materialize in 191 5. Germany 
experienced no special difficulty in holding her own in the West 
at the very time when she was more than holding her own in 
the East. Why the Western Allies failed to relieve Russia re- 
quires some explanation. 

It will be recalled that by the end of 19 14 the fighting on the 
Western Front had assumed the character of trench warfare. 
Allies and Germans faced each other in parallel ditches, from 
thirty to two hundred yards apart, extending continuously 
from the Alps to the North Sea. Behind the Allied front there 
were second and third rows of trenches, and further positions 
at intervals in the rear. But the Germans had these, and some- 
thing more. Ever since their defeat at the Marne and their 
failure to force France to a speedy peace, they had expended 
immense ingenuity and labor in preparing defensive positions 
whereby with the least possible effort they might be enabled to 
retain permanently their first conquests — Belgium and the 
rich iron and coal regions of northern France. The ramifications 
of their trenches were endless, and great redoubts, almost flush 
with the ground, consisting of a labyrinth of trenches and ma- 
chine-gun " nests, " studded their front. In natural defensive 

1 See above, p. 96. 
1 



H4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

areas, such as the mining districts about Lille and in Lorraine, 
every acre contained a fort. "The German lines in the West 
were a fortress in the fullest sense of the word. The day of 
manceuver battles had for the moment gone. There was no 
question of envelopment or outflanking, for there were no flanks 
to turn. The slow methods of fortress warfare — sap and 
mine, battery and assault — were all that remained to the 
offensive." 1 

In 191 5 the burden of the offensive was on the Allies. They 
knew it, and throughout the preceding winter they had been 
planning for it. Even before the Germans had begun their 
great drives against Russia, the Allies undertook to follow up 
their own victories of the autumn of 1914 by "breaking through" 
the formidable new German trench-lines. 

The efforts of the Allies on the Western Front will be more 
readily evaluated if their front is considered as comprising three 
sectors : (1) the northern sector, extending over a hundred miles 
from the Belgian town of Nieuport, east of Ypres and Armen- 
tieres, west of Lille, east of Arras, west of Peronne, east of Roye, 
and through Noyon to a point on the Oise river a few miles 
north of Compiegne, and held by Belgian and French troops from 
Nieuport to Ypres, by British from Ypres to Bethune, and by 
French alone from Bethune to the Oise ; (2) the central sector, 
exclusively French, from the Oise to Soissons on the Aisne, fol- 
lowing the northern bank of the Aisne for perhaps twenty miles, 
then swinging southeast through the Champagne country, 
northeast of Rheims, through Perthes across the forested ridge 
of the Argonne to the Meuse River, just northwest of Verdun; 
(3) the eastern sector, swinging around the great fortifications 
of Verdun, bending back sharply to the Meuse at St. Mihiel 
(about ten miles south of Verdun), turning east again from St. 
Mihiel to strike the Moselle river at a point near the Lorraine 
frontier, thence extending southeast and crossing over the crest 
of the Vosges into Upper Alsace, where Thann was still retained 
by the French. 

Early in 191 5 attempts were made by the Allies in each of 
these sectors to carry opposing German lines. In the central 
sector, the French managed to capture Perthes and fought 
valiantly but vainly in the vicinity of Soissons. In the eastern 
sector, the French made a desperate effort to wipe out the St. 
Mihiel salient : small gains were secured on the northern and 
southern sides of the wedge, but the main objective was not 

1 Nelson's History of the War, Vol. x, p. 107. 



RUSSIA RETREATS 115 

achieved. The most ambitious offensive, however, was under- 
taken in the northern sector by the British, who by this time 
numbered well-nigh half a million. Early in the morning of 
March 10, 191 5, a terrific bombardment of the German trenches 
west of Neuve Chapelle (about two-thirds of the distance from 
Arras to Armentieres) and of the village itself prepared the way 
for an infantry attack. Before noon the village of Neuve Cha- 
pelle, now a smouldering heap of ruins, was completely in British 
possession. In the afternoon, however, and on the two succeed- 
ing days, the British were unable to push their advantage with 
energy ; the Germans were allowed to recover from the surprise 
and demoralization of the sudden bombardment ; and conse- 
quently the British failed to gain the commanding ridge east 
of Neuve Chapelle. At the cost of 13,000 lives, Sir John French 
had advanced his line a mile or so, on a front of three miles, 
but the great city of Lille, his main objective, was still securely 
in German hands. 

By the middle of April the Allied offensive in the West had 
made small local gains "nibbling" at the German lines, but had 
failed to accomplish any strategically important object, either 
in the movement toward Lille, in the advance in Champagne, 
or in the attack on the St. Mihiel salient. Shortly after the 
British offensive had come to a standstill, the British minister of 
war, Lord Kitchener, told the House of Lords that the shortage 
of munitions was causing him "very serious anxiety," and Sir 
John French's official report of the battle of Neuve Chapelle 
likewise referred to the pressing need of "an almost unlimited 
supply of ammunition." 

Herein lay the real explanation of Allied failure in 191 5. The 
Great War was a war of machines and ammunition as well as of 
men. Not only were the Russians deficient in ammunition and 
artillery and airplanes, but in 191 5 the French and British 
also. To make the first dent on the heavily armored German 
trenches of the Western Front required, as the British and French 
learned from sorry experience, the employment of all their reserve 
cannon and all their reserve shells ; to carry any considerable 
section of the enemy fines and to "break through" would require 
greater reserves than they then possessed. 

To add to the discomfiture of the Allies, the Germans actually 
undertook a counter-offensive against Ypres in April and May, 
19 1 5. The Germans did not prepare the way for their attack 
by artillery but by a cloud of greenish vapor which a gentle 
breeze wafted towards the Allies' trenches. The vapor, as the 



n6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



Allied troops soon discovered to their amazement and consterna- 
tion, was chlorine gas, which chokes and asphyxiates with horrible 
effect. The French troops holding the line north of Ypres 
broke and fled before this novel and diabolically cruel form of 
attack, and Ypres itself was saved only by the gallant and dogged 




The Second Battle of Ypres, April-May, 191 5 

resistance of Canadian troops. After a month's incessant 
fighting, the battle of Ypres died down : the Allies had prevented 
the Germans from "breaking through," but the Germans had 
greatly reduced the Allied salient in front of Ypres and 
above all had put new fear and new terror into the hearts of 
the Allies. 

Thenceforth the Allies, and above all the British, labored 
zealously and anxiously to supply an equipment of hand-grenades, 
bombs, high-explosive shells, machine guns, airplanes, and 
respirators (for protection against gas attacks), that would be 
adequate for the new needs of trench-warfare. But such an 
equipment could not be supplied by day-and-night output of 
all the available factories of France and Great Britain, in a week, 
or in a month, or even in several months. Meanwhile decisive 
engagements on the Western Front must pause. But meanwhile 
the Germans, satisfied that they had little to fear from French 



RUSSIA RETREATS 117 

or British during the next few months and that their own superior 
equipment and technique would offset any superiority of Allied 
numbers, hastened to fight decisive engagements on the Eastern 
Front. Russia must pay for the unpreparedness of Great Britain 
and France. 

Chlorine gas — the latest novelty in German " frightfulness " 
— was emitted against the Allies at Ypres in April, 1915. On 
May 1, Mackensen's Drive into Galicia began. And from May 
to September occurred that series of sensational thrusts and 
triumphs which, as we have already seen, carried German con- 
quest into the heart of Russia. 

Immediately after the first Russian reverses in Galicia, Gen- 
eral Foch, commanding the northern sector of the Western 
Front, sought a diversion by directing his forces again to take 
the offensive. On May 9, the French just north of Arras and the 
British farther north in the vicinity of Neuve Chapelle simul- 
taneously assailed the German trenches. The immediate objec- 
tive of the French attack was the important railway center of 
Lens ; that of the British was the Aubers ridge east of Neuve 
Chapelle ; if successful, from Lens and Aubers the Allies might 
push on toward Lille. But after a month's most sanguinary 
struggle the offensive broke down. The British had won "the 
entire first-line system of trenches" on a front of 3200 yards 
and the first and second lines on a front of two miles or more, 
but they had not reached Aubers. The French had mastered 
the so-called "Labyrinth," an intricate maze of trenches and 
subterranean tunnels, but Lens remained uncaptured. No 
relief was afforded the Russians — and none could be afforded. 

In fact the Allies in the summer of 191 5 grew very fearful 
lest by spending their small reserve of shells in fruitless assaults 
on the German trenches they would be so impoverished of 
supplies that they would be unable to hold their own against a 
later great German Drive in the West. 1 So the best they could 
do was to husband their resources, to hurry munition-production, 
to harry the besieging Germans, and to suffer their enemy to 
inflict upon their Eastern ally one defeat after another. They 
wished to help Russia, but they were impotent. 

It was not until late September, when Hindenburg's Drive 

was practically completed, that the Allies on the Western Front 

felt themselves sufficiently supplied with munitions to undertake 

1 This fear was rendered acute in July by the success of the German Crown 
Prince in advancing his lines in the Argonne some four hundred yards despite his 
supposed inferiority of numbers and his recognized deficiency in commanding 
qualities. 



n8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

a forward movement. During the summer many thousands of 
British soldiers, who before the war had been skilled mechanics, 
had been released from active service in France and sent home 
for munitions work. In Great Britain, the purchase of raw 
materials and the employment of labor had been organized ; 
every machine-tool factory was under control of a governmental 
Ministry of Munitions ; and, in addition to the twenty national 
shell factories already in operation, eleven new projectile works 
had been established. In France the situation was even better : 
the hope expressed in the summer, that by October the full 
complement of French shells would be attained, seemed likely 
to be realized. 

In September, 191 5, intense activity of Allied aviators and 
furious bombardment of the German trenches in France heralded 
the beginning of a forward movement. The infantry attack 
began on September 25. While unimportant assaults were 
delivered near Ypres, and at other points along the line, the main 
attacks were concentrated at two points, the one in Artois just 
north of Arras, the other in Champagne midway between Rheims 
and Verdun. 

In the Artois region the initial onset met with brilliant success. 
A French army under General d'Urbal, north of Arras, captured 
Souchez and reached the ridge dominating the town of Vimy. 
Sir John French reported that cooperating British troops " carried 
the enemy's first and most powerful line of intrenchments, 
extending from our extreme right flank at Grenay (just west of 
Lens) to a point north of the Hohenzollern redoubt — a dis- 
tance of 6500 yards. The position was exceptionally strong, 
consisting of a double line, which included some large redoubts 
and a network of trenches and bomb-proof shelters. Dugouts 
were constructed at short intervals all along the line, some 
of them being large caves thirty feet below the ground." British 
troops succeeded, moreover, in occupying the village of Loos and 
the outskirts of Hulluck between Lens and La Bassee. "The 
enemy's second line posts were taken, the commanding position 
known as Hill 70 in advance [east] of Loos was finally captured, 
and a strong line was established and consolidated in close prox- 
imity to the German third and last line." 

Meanwhile, in Champagne, according to an official report, 
the French under General Castelnau, during September 26- 
27, "succeeded north of Souain and Perthes in occupying a 
front facing north, and in contact with the German second line, 
along a stretch of seven and a half miles. The ground thus 



RUSSIA RETREATS 119 

conquered represented an area of some fifteen and a half square 
miles, and was traversed by lines of trenches graduated to a 
great depth. The borders of the woods were organized for 
defense, and innumerable passages, trenches, and parallels 
facilitated resistance foot by foot." 

After the shock of the initial attack, however, the Allies failed 
to press on, as popular critics expected, to capture the German 



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railway connections at Lens in Artois and at Somme-Py in Cham- 
pagne. In Champagne, to be sure, the French captured the 
village of Tahure, October 6, and further slight gains were made 
in Artois, but the whole movement reached a standstill by the 
middle of October. It was patent that, despite feverish activity 
of Allied factories throughout the summer, the Germans still 
enjoyed a superiority in munitions-production besides an almost 
impregnable defensive position, and that to drive the Germans 
out of France and Belgium would be a terribly difficult task. 



120 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Though France and Great Britain by their repeated failures 
in 19 1 5 had displayed their inability to prevent Germany from 
administering decisive defeats to Russia, they had more than 
held their own. They had learned some valuable lessons in 
trench- warfare by sad experience. They had, with severe 
losses to themselves, considerably depleted Germany's man- 
power, — and in the long run they could afford depletion of 
man-power better than Germany. Most important of all, 
they had utilized the lull in Germany's attacks upon them in 
order to forge new weapons in constantly augmenting quantities. 
They had failed to relieve Russia, but the great Drives of Mack- 
ensen and Hindenburg against Russia had absorbed Germany's 
attention and energies and had prevented her from crippling 
France and Great Britain in their weakest hour. 1 As the event 
subsequently proved, Russia had relieved Great Britain and 
France. 

In the meantime bitter criticism was heard in England, and 
profound disappointment was expressed in France. In Ger- 
many the latest forward movement of the Allies was regarded 
as a costly failure, and a clear proof of the ability of the Germans, 
with their superior technique, to hold their lines in France against 
heavy numerical odds. Of the September movement alone a 
Berlin report estimated the French casualties at 130,000, the 
British at 60,000, and the German at 40,000. 2 Sure of them- 
selves in the West and elated at their continuous triumphs 
in the East, the Germans were now quite obsessed by the mad 
genius of "grandeur." The Kaiser and the General Staff looked 
about for new worlds to conquer. 

1 In Great Britain, especially, zeal for recruiting and determination to win the 
war were immeasurably heightened, despite Russian reverses, by continued German 
outrages in Belgium, notably by the "judicial murder," on October 12, 1915, of 
Edith Cavell, a brave English nurse in Brussels, who had aided the escape of 
wounded British prisoners. 

2 The French General Staff estimated the German losses at 200,000. 



CHAPTER VII 

GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 
DECLINE OF ALLIED PRESTIGE 

The year 191 5 marked the height of Teutonic triumph and 
the nadir of Allied defeat. To the optimism of the Allies at 
the beginning of the year rapidly succeeded a profound pessimism 
which speedily affected neutral countries, especially the waver- 
ing Balkan states. In the spring of 191 5 the Allies had set out 
with high hopes to dominate the Near East, but a series of 
mistakes and misfortunes dashed their hopes and loosened 
their hold. 

Turkey's entry into the war on the side of the Central Empires 
had appeared almost providential to the Allies ; if properly 
exploited, it might have provided a powerful motive and a 
favorable opportunity for reviving the Balkan League and for 
employing it not only to dissolve the Ottoman Empire but also 
to disintegrate Austria-Hungary and bring Germany to terms. 
But the failure of the Anglo-French naval attack on the Darda- 
nelles in March and the repeated failures of the Anglo-French 
land forces on Gallipoli in May and June signified for the Allies 
a falling barometer in the Balkans. Thenceforth the barometer 
fell rapidly. 

In May, Italy was prevailed upon to enter the war on the side 
of the Allies, but only by means of the most extravagant promises 
of eventual territorial compensations, and territorial compensa- 
tions in considerable part at the expense of the Balkan states. 
Yet Italy sent no aid to Serbia or to the Dardanelles, and the 
progress of her arms against Austria-Hungary in the summer 
of 191 5 was not such as to inspire enthusiasm or confidence. 

Meanwhile the Russian campaign in Galicia, so promising 
in March, met with terrible disaster in May ; and from May to 
September the Russians abandoned to the Austro- Germans one 
city after another, one province after another. All of Galicia, 
all of Poland, large strips of Lithuania and Courland, became 
Teutonic conquests. 



122 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

And meanwhile, too, on the Western Front one Allied offensive 
after another broke down. Apparently the French and British 
could barely hold their own ; certainly they could not relieve 
Russia in her hour of supreme need. How could they hope to 
aid the Balkan states, if these were minded to declare war against 
Turkey and the Central Empires and thereby incur the risk of 
invasion by Turco-Teu tonic hosts ? 

To regain some of their rapidly waning prestige in the Balkans 
the Allies resolved to put forth one supreme effort to" clear the 
Gallipoli peninsula of Turkish defenders and open the way to 
Constantinople. If the heights called Sari Bair, back of Anzac 
Cove, could be carried by storm, an attack on the European 
defenses of the Dardanelles might be undertaken with reasonable 
probability of success. The great effort was made early in 
August, just after the Russians had lost Warsaw. While re- 
enforcements were landed at Suvla Bay, north of Sari Bair, 
Australasian and Indian troops with reckless gallantry charged 
up the slopes of the hill. Indians actually succeeded in reaching 
a point on the heights whence they could look down upon the 
Dardanelles, but they were compelled to fall back for lack of 
support. With valor quite equal to that shown by the British 
colonials, the Turks swept down the slopes, in the face of a 
murderous artillery and machine-gun fire, to dislodge the British 
from the footholds which had been gained. On August 10, at 
the close of the battle, the British still held some of their gains, 
but two commanding positions, which had been won by daring 
assaults, had been lost again to the Turks, and the supreme 
effort had failed with a loss of 40,000 British troops. In the 
trenches at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, the Anglo-French 
troops were decimated by disease ; before Sari Bair the British 
colonials were maddened by thirst in consequence of unpardonable 
■ inefficiency in the management of the water supply. The whole 
Dardanelles and Gallipoli exploit was worse than a failure ; it 
was a disgrace. All things considered, it was small wonder 
that by September, 1915, the Allied barometer in the Balkans 
had fallen until it indicated storms and tempests. 

Throughout the spring and summer of 191 5 the diplomatists 
of the Entente Powers had essayed to reconcile Bulgaria with 
Serbia, Greece, and Rumania, and to bring about the joint inter- 
vention of the three neutral states — Bulgaria, Greece, and 
Rumania. But Bulgaria would not be reconciled unless her 
neighbors should relinquish what she believed they had robbed 
her of in the Balkan War of 1913 : she must have the Bulgarian 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 123 

Dobrudja from Rumania, the towns of Drama and Kavala 
from Greece, and from Serbia a wide extent of Macedonia in- 
cluding Monastir. Serbia, however, after long negotiations, 
was willing to give only partial satisfaction to Bulgaria's Mace- 
donian aspirations, for since Italy's entry into the war she had 
discovered an unwonted chariness on the part of the Entente 
about pledging compensations on the Adriatic for sacrifices she 
might make in Macedonia. 

In Greece were divided counsels. On one hand, the party of 
Premier Venizelos, which controlled the majority of the Greek 
Parliament, was ardently in favor of the Entente and eager to 
enter the war ; Venizelos felt that concessions might profitably 
be made to Bulgaria in view of the prospect of Greece's securing 
Smyrna and Cyprus. King Constantine, on the other hand, with 
the support of his German-trained army officers, and with the 
approval of a popular element, was stubbornly determined not 
to join forces with the Entente. The king's refusal to intervene 
in the war was perhaps partly ascribable to the influence of his 
wife, Queen Sophia, a sister of the German Emperor ; doubt- 
less also the admiration for German military methods, to which 
he had frequently given outspoken expression before the war, 
now made him extremely reluctant to hazard his own army in 
a struggle against the Central Empires, particularly since the 
Entente armies had given no convincing proof as yet of their 
ability to win the war. At any rate King Constantine positively 
declined to approve any territorial cessions to Bulgaria, assign- 
ing patriotic motives, although in so doing he had to part with 
his popular premier (March, 191 5) and to ignore the mandate 
of a general election (June). When at length, late in August, 
Venizelos was reinstated in the premiership, the military situa- 
tion was so universally unfavorable to the Entente that even he 
promised to maintain neutrality and to countenance no cession 
of Greek territory. 

Rumania's position throughout this season was not a happy 
one. She longed for territorial expansion, but its achievement 
involved the solution of a difficult problem of tactics. If she 
joined the Entente, she might wrest Transylvania and Bukowina 
from Austria-Hungary. If, on the other hand, she should join 
the Central Empires, she might conquer Bessarabia from Russia. 
Obviously, she could not "eat the cake and keep it too." If 
she chose Bessarabia, she could not have Transylvania, and 
vice versa her appropriation of Transylvania would bar her from 
Bessarabia. Furthermore, her geographical situation was most 



124 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

embarrassing. Her irregular and unshapely boundaries ex- 
posed her to easy invasion from Russia, from Hungary, and 
especially from Bulgaria. On whatever side she chose to fight, 
she must be certain that the other sides were securely held by 
friends. The royal family in Rumania, though Hohenzollern 
by birth, were believed to be somewhat pro-Ally in sentiment ; 
and probably a large majority of the Rumanian people hoped for 
and expected an eventual Allied victory. It was but natural, 
however, that the statesmen of the country should make Bul- 
garia's adherence to the Allied cause a prerequisite to Rumania's 
participation. Faced on the west by an unvanquished Austria 
and on the north by a retreating Russia, Rumania could not view 
with equanimity a hostile Bulgaria to the south. So, when 
neither Serbia nor Greece would make the concessions demanded 
by Bulgaria, Rumania prudently abstained from casting in her 
lot with the Entente. And her prudence seemed amply justified 
by the reverses and resulting miseries which beset great Russia 
in September, 191 5. 

The Anglo-French failures at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli, 
the spectacular victories of the Austro-Germans in Russia, and 
the powerlessness of Great Britain, France, and Italy to render 
effectual assistance to their hard-pressed ally, made the task 
of Entente diplomacy in the Balkans difficult and painful. The 
prestige of the Allies had reached the vanishing point ; they had 
failed to dominate the Near East — and had failed utterly. 
But by the same token the prestige of the Teutons had increased ; 
their diplomatists found roses where the Allies had discovered 
thorns. Germany laid plans to master the Near East. 

BULGARIA'S ENTRY INTO THE WAR AND THE CONQUEST 

OF SERBIA 

Shifty King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and his faithful henchman, 
Premier Radoslavoff, were much-courted personages during the 
summer of 191 5. Their active assistance was solicited alike by 
Central Empires and by Entente Powers. Knowing full well 
that Bulgaria held the balance of power in the Balkans, they 
were resolved to sell their country's aid to the highest bidder. 
As Radoslavoff said on August g, " Bulgaria is fully prepared 
and waiting to enter the war the moment she receives absolute 
guarantees that by so doing she will obtain that for which other 
nations already engaged are striving, namely, the realization 
of her national ideals. . . . The bulk of these aspirations lie 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 125 

in Serbian Macedonia, which with its 1,500,000 Bulgar in- 
habitants was pledged and assigned to us at the close of the 
first Balkan war. It is still ours by right and principle of na- 
tionality. When the Triple Entente can assure us that this 
territory will be returned to Bulgaria and our minor claims in 
Greek Macedonia and elsewhere realized, the Allies will find us 
ready to fight with them. But these guarantees must be real 
and absolute. No mere paper ones can be accepted." 

It was already apparent to the Bulgarian government that 
the offer of Macedonia, if made by the Entente, would not be 
concurred in by the parties most vitally concerned, Serbia and 
Greece, and could not be carried out by a France and Great 
Britain impotent to defeat the Turks, or by a Russia incapable 
of defending Warsaw. On the other hand, the Central Empires 
promised Bulgaria not only larger Serbian spoils than the Entente 
had ever contemplated but also a rectification of her Turkish 
boundary, a liberal financial loan, and immediate military aid 
by veterans of Mackensen's and Hindenburg's Drives. Ferdinand 
and Radoslavoff hesitated no longer. On September 6, 191 5, 
they signed at Sofia a secret convention with representatives 
of the Dual Monarchy, providing for a joint attack upon Serbia 
and for the territorial rewards to Bulgaria. 

Bulgaria, in accordance with the secret convention, speedily 
concluded arrangements with German bankers for an advance 
of fifty million dollars, of which about half was to be paid forth- 
with in cash and the remainder applied to outstanding obliga- 
tions. 1 Likewise, in September, a treaty was signed with the 
Ottoman Empire, whereby Bulgaria was to receive the corner 
of European Turkey marked off by the line of the Maritza and 
Tunja rivers, including the railway station at Karagatch though 
not Adrianople, and in return was to maintain "armed neu- 
trality." 

At once the Bulgarian army was mobilized "for the main- 
tenance of armed neutrality." Sir Edward Grey, manifestly 
unconvinced by the official announcement of the Bulgarian 
government that mobilization was not preliminary to war, de- 
clared in the British House of Commons on September 28, "If 
it should result in Bulgaria assuming an aggressive attitude on 
the side of our enemies we are prepared to give our friends in 
the Balkans all the support in our power." Early in October, 
Russia dispatched an ultimatum to Sofia, affirming that "The 
presence of German and Austrian officers at the Ministry of 

1 This was in addition to an advance of thirty millions made in February, 191 5. 



126 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

War and on the staff of the army, the concentration of troops 
in the zone bordering Serbia, and the extensive financial sup- 
port accepted from our enemies by the Sofia cabinet, no longer 
leave any doubt as to the object of the military preparations 
of Bulgaria." The ultimatum allowed the Bulgarian govern- 
ment twenty-four hours in which to dismiss the Teuton officers 
and " openly break with the enemies of the Slav cause and of 
Russia." 

To the entreaties and threats of the Entente Powers Bul- 
garia was deaf. On October 14, 191 5, she declared war on 
Serbia. On the next day Great Britain declared war against 
her, and France followed suit on October 16, and Russia and 
Italy on October 19. Sir Edward Grey admitted that the 
Central Powers had successfully outbid the Entente in their 
offers for Bulgarian support. 

When Bulgaria finally entered the war and began an invasion 
of Serbia from the east, the conquest of Serbia was already 
under way from the north. It will be recalled that the Great 
War had been precipitated by the purpose of Austria-Hungary 
to " chastise" Serbia; yet for more than a year Serbia had re- 
mained unchastised. This fact was due not so much to Serbian 
valor, of which, however, there were plentiful instances, as to 
Austria's need of defending herself against Russia and her 
desire not to alienate Italy. The entry of Italy into the war in 
May, 191 5, and the subsequent rapid retreat of Russia changed 
the aspect of affairs. There was no longer any chance of keep- 
ing Italy neutral and the distant retirement and resulting ex- 
haustion of the Russians made it practicable for Austria- 
Hungary at the end of September, 191 5, to transfer large forces 
from the Russian to the Serbian Front. Moreover, the demon- 
strated ability of the German troops on the Western Front to 
hold the main armies of the French and British rendered it 
possible for Germany to send some of her victorious veterans 
of the Russian campaign to cooperate with Austrians and Hun- 
garians in a sensational, whirlwind drive, whose purpose would 
be more than the mere chastisement of Serbia — it would be 
Teutonic mastery of the Near East. 

Serbia was no longer in a position to thwart the Teutonic 
purpose. Her great losses in the battles of 1914 had been 
succeeded by further depletions in 191 5 from pestilence and 
famine, until her total armed strength, allowing for the use of 
every available man, amounted to less than 200,000. Thrice 
she had been invaded and thrice in heroic battles she had flung 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 127 

back the invader, but each time the enemy had been Austrian 
and in number had barely exceeded her own forces. Now, 
however, her northern border was threatened by at least 300,000 
Austro-Germans, equipped with the most up-to-date guns and 
with unlimited stores of ammunition, flushed with recent victories 
over the Russians, and commanded by Field-Marshal von 
Mackensen, one of the ablest of German generals. Further- 
more, unlike the campaigns of 1914, Serbia was now doomed to 
face an onset of Bulgarian troops, 350,000 strong, who would 
cross her extended eastern border and threaten at many points 
the capture of her one important line of railway up the Morava 
and down the Vardar rivers, her one dependable line of com- 
munication with Salonica and Western Europe: If no aid should 
come to her from Greece or from England and France, she would 
certainly be overborne by weight of numbers and quantity of 
munitions ; her armies would be surrounded and probably 
annihilated. 

Austro-German forces were thrown across the Danube and 
Save rivers on October 7. Belgrade fell two days later, and 
Semendria and Pojarevatz in quick succession. The main body 
of Mackensen's command were thus prepared to sweep south- 
ward up the Morava valley toward Nish, the Serbian war- 
capital, while the left flank possessed itself of the Danube valley 
in northeastern Serbia and the right flank crossed the Drina 
river and occupied northwestern Serbia. Then it was that 
Bulgaria declared war. King Ferdinand scented a corpse and 
proceeded to rifle dying Serbia. 

The Serbians could barely cope with the Austro-Germans in 
the north ; against the Bulgarians in the east and south they 
could only offer pitifully inadequate resistance and trust in the 
prompt arrival of foreign aid from Salonica. No aid arrived, 
however, and the Bulgarians enjoyed a triumphal procession 
into Macedonia. From Kustendil the main Bulgarian army, 
under General Teodorov, advanced by way of Egri Palanka. 
Rail connections between Nish and Salonica were cut first at 
Vrania. Veles, or Kuprulu, fell on October 20, and two days 
later the Bulgarians entered Uskub, the converging point of all 
the roads of southern Serbia. 

On October 26, another Bulgarian army, under General 
Bojadiev, after crossing the Timok river and capturing Negotin 
and Prahovo, effected a junction with the Teutonic left wing 
in the northeastern corner of Serbia. Thereby the Teuto- 
Bulgarian forces were in contact with each other on a wide semi- 



128 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



circular front extending from the Drina around north of Kragu- 
jevatz, west of Negotin, east of Nish, to a point west of Uskub. 
The Serbians now formed two forces, hopelessly isolated by the 
Bulgarian advance from Uskub towards Prishtina, the one, the 




remnant of the armies of the North, lying from Kragujevatz 
to east of Nish, the other and lesser in the hills north of Monastir. 
The invaders pushed on relentlessly. Kragujevatz, the 
principal Serbian arsenal, was captured on October 30. Nish, 
after a stubborn defense, fell on November 6. In vain did the 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 129 

Serbian armies of the north attempt to stand at the Ibar river ; 
Novibazar was lost on November 20, and Mitrovitza and Prish- 
tina three days later ; the remnants were swept together in the 
plain of Kossovo by the converging Austrian, German, and 
Bulgarian columns. Thousands were taken prisoner, and only 
a band of refugees, including King Peter riding in a rude ox- 
cart, succeeded in reaching Montenegro. 

The last action before the complete conquest of Serbia was 
fought by the small army in the south in a desperate effort to 
stem the Bulgarian advance from Uskub upon Prisrend and 
Monastir. At Babuna Pass, between Uskub and Prilep, the 
Serbians checked overwhelmingly superior forces of the enemy 
for a week and more. Eventually they had to abandon the 
Pass and Prilep as well. Prisrend was surrendered on the last 
day of November, and Monastir on December 5. The virtual 
completion of the conquest of Serbia was signalized by an an- 
nouncement of Field Marshal von Mackensen on November 28, 
that "with the flight of the scanty remnants of the Serbian army 
into the Albanian mountains our main operations are closed." 

FAILURE OF THE ALLIES TO RELIEVE SERBIA: THE 
SALONICA EXPEDITION 

The only chance which the Serbians had of stemming in- 
vasion and preventing German mastery of the Near East lay 
in prompt and effective military aid from the Allies. That 
no such aid was forthcoming was due to several miscalculations 
on the part of the Allies: (1) it was fondly believed until too 
late that Bulgaria would not venture to ally herself with the 
Central Empires ; (2) it was vainly expected that if perad venture 
Bulgaria should attack Serbia, Greece would feel constrained 
by the terms of her defensive treaty of 1913 with Serbia to go to 
the assistance of that country ; and (3) it was foolishly imagined 
that an immediate transfer of Allied forces from Gallipoli to 
Salonica, from an offensive against the Turks to a defensive in 
support of Serbia, would be a confession of failure ruinous alike 
to domestic and to foreign prestige. 

No doubt in the new crisis the Allies had good reason to count 
on Greek assistance. Back in March, 191 5, Venizelos had been 
forced to resign the Greek premiership because of King Con- 
stantine's stubborn refusal to assent to the cession of Greek 
territory necessary to reconstitute the Balkan League and to 
draw Bulgaria, with Greece, into the war on the side of the 



130 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Entente. In August, however, when it was no longer a question 
of conciliating Bulgaria but rather of respecting treaty engage- 
ments with Serbia, Venizelos obtained from the king sufficient 
assurances to enable him conscientiously to resume the premier- 
ship. With Venizelos again in power, the Allies were encouraged. 

Late in September, when the Allies first awoke to the gravity 
of the situation confronting Serbia, Great Britain and France 
promised Venizelos that they would send 150,000 men to Salonica 
to help Greece fulfill her treaty obligations. These obligations 
Venizelos acknowledged in a speech before the Greek Parliament 
on October 4. "The danger of conflict is great," he said, "but 
we shall none the less fulfill the obligations imposed on us by our 
treaty of alliance." He called for the complete mobilization 
of the Greek army. About the same time the first contingent 
of Allied troops arrived at Salonica. It was obvious that the 
Greek army of 350,000 men, in concert with an Anglo-French 
force, was preparing to strike the Bulgarians as soon as these 
should attack Serbia. Had matters worked out as thus planned, 
the success of Mackensen's Drive into Serbia would have been 
highly problematical. 

Once more Venizelos had reckoned without his king. Con- 
stantine was thoroughly distrustful of the potency of Allied 
arms and filled with a craven fear of what the combined Teutons 
and Bulgarians would do to the Greek army ; quite likely he had 
personal promises from the Kaiser of rich rewards for Greece 
if he would remain neutral. At any rate on October 5, Con- 
stantine for the second time forced the resignation of Venizelos, 
to the surprise of the Greeks and the consternation of the Allies. 
The new Greek ministry promptly declared that it would main- 
tain "armed neutrality," but a neutrality, so far as concerned 
the British and French, "to be characterized by the most com- 
plete and sincere benevolence." If this assurance meant any- 
thing, it signified that the Allies might land troops of their own 
at Salonica and use Greek Macedonia as a base of operations 
against the Bulgarians, but they must not expect any armed 
assistance from Greece. 

Under these circumstances the Allies fell to disputing as to 
what was best to do. Some of their officials urged that the de- 
fection of Greece had put a new burden upon them and that, they 
should strain every nerve to gather quickly a very large army 
of their own at Salonica ; the whole Anglo-French expeditionary 
force should be withdrawn immediately from Gallipoli for this 
purpose, and additional troops, if necessary, should be spared 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 131 

from the Western front. Others felt that the burden put upon 
them by Greek defection was more than they could bear ; these 
disputants protested against any weakening of the Western 
Front and against a wholesale withdrawal from Gallipoli ; they 
advocated making a virtue of necessity and for the present leav- 
ing Serbia to her fate. 

Between the extreme counsels of sending no aid to Serbia and 
of dispatching large forces thither, a curious compromise pre- 
vailed. A few troops would be transported from Gallipoli, 
but not all. General Sarrail would be brought from the Western 
Front to command the expedition at Salonica, but no troops would 
be spared from Marshal Joffre's command in France. An 
Anglo-French force would gradually be assembled in Greek 
Macedonia, large enough to overawe neutral Greece but small 
enough to be of no striking assistance to friendly Serbia. 1 

Just as a mistaken faith in Bulgaria's good intentions had 
prevented the Allies in September from concerting measures 
for her coercion, so now in October the Allies grossly under- 
estimated the stubbornness and pro-German sympathies of the 
Greek king. They still seemed to imagine that they could get 
the Greek army to fight alongside of their Salonica expeditionary 
force. Otherwise it is difficult to explain why Anglo-French 
forces at Salonica were as large — and as small — ■ as they were. 
When, on October 14, 1915, Bulgaria finally entered the war, 
more than 200,000 Austro-Germans under Mackensen were 
pushing southward from the Save and the Danube against the 
Serbian front, a quarter of a million Bulgarians were moving 
westward against Serbia's exposed right flank, to the north 
Rumania was comfortably neutral, while far to the south 13,000 
French and British troops in the vicinity of Salonica were pre- 
paring to march inland, and King Constantine was declaring 
that his treaty of alliance with Serbia had no binding force in 
the existing emergency. 

Throughout October and November the Allies continued to 
dicker with King Constantine and his puppet ministers. They 
begged and they implored. They made offers and overtures. 
In November, the king dissolved his troublesome pro-Venizelist 
Parliament, and the ensuing general election, from which the 
Greek partisans of Venizelos absented themselves, appeared 

1 In this connection it should be noted that Sir Edward Carson, in Great Britain, 
and Theophile Delcasse, in France, resigned their ministerial posts rather than 
share in the responsibility of sending a pitifully weak expeditionary force to certain 
failure in Serbia. Carson thought a much larger expedition should be sent. Del- 
casse would send no expedition at all. 



i 3 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

on the face of its returns to be a signal vindication of the royal 
policy. More obstinately than ever Constantine adhered to 
his policy of "armed neutrality," which by December had be- 
come to the Allies as much a threat as a promise. 

Meanwhile the Teutons and the Bulgarians were overrunning 
Serbia, to the effective relief of which the Anglo-French forces 
at Salonica were too weak to proceed. General Sarrail's small 
army did manage to advance up the Vardar river and to in- 
trench itself on a triangle of Serbian territory, the base of 
the triangle being the Serbo- Greek frontier, its apex the con- 
fluence of the Vardar and Tcherna rivers, its western leg the 
Tcherna, and its eastern leg a line to Lake Doiran near the angle 
of the Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian frontiers. As soon as the 
Bulgarians had put an end to active Serbian resistance in the 
field and had occupied Prisrend and Monastir, they were free 
to turn their attention to the Allied positions in the south. The 
battle of the Vardar, from December 3 to 12, 1915, was simply 
a series of sledge-hammer blows delivered against the sides of 
the Anglo-French triangle. During the course of the battle 
the French line was withdrawn from the Tcherna to the eastern 
bank of the Vardar, the apex was drawn back to Demir-Kapu, 
the British line to the east was battered in, and the whole Anglo- 
French force was finally pushed back into Greek territory. The 
attempt of the Allies to relieve Serbia had ended in ignominious 
failure. 

That the battle of the Vardar ended in defeat and not disaster 
was due to the ability of the Franco-British army, and the un- 
willingness of the Bulgarians, to cross the Serbo-Greek frontier. 
While the Bulgarians, doubtless in compliance with Germany's 
request, stopped short at the frontier, the Allies retreated through 
Greek territory and proceeded to strengthen the Greek city of 
Salonica in expectation of a Teutonic-Bulgarian attack. King 
Constantine, as might have been expected, caused his subservient 
premier, Skouloudis, to protest vociferously against this "abuse" 
of Greek neutrality, but the Entente Powers could reply that 
their troops had been sent to Salonica at the instance of Venizelos 
to assist Greece in fulfilling the terms of the secret Serbo-Greek 
defensive alliance against Bulgaria, and this interpretation was 
confirmed by the Greek ex-premier from his retirement. 

Nevertheless the situation of the Allies at Salonica was preca- 
rious in the extreme. In front of them were a quarter of a million 
Bulgarian soldiers reenforced by Teutonic and Turkish units, 
awaiting only a word from the Kaiser's brother-in-law to cross 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 133 

into Greek territory. Behind them were a quarter of a million 
Greek soldiers held by King Constantine's orders under an 
" armed neutrality" that daily grew more menacing. It was 
now no longer a question of relieving Serbia ; it was a question 
of relieving the Anglo-French expeditionary force at Salonica. 

For this purpose the bulk of the Allied troops on the Gallipoli 
peninsula were still available. In October, when General Sarrail 
had loudly called for reinforcements to enable him to assume the 
offensive in the Vardar valley, Sir Ian Hamilton, the British 
commander on Gallipoli, had stoutly maintained that his troops 
could not be disembarked thence without incurring disastrous 
losses at the hands of the Turks and ruinous collapse of morale. 
Sir Ian had been recalled and Lord Kitchener himself had been 
sent to investigate the situation in Gallipoli. Withdrawal from 
the peninsula was openly advised by General Monro, Sir Ian's 
successor, frankly discussed by the press, and postponed, it 
seemed, only by the unwillingness of the British cabinet to ad- 
mit a disheartening defeat at the very time when a supreme ef- 
fort was being made at home to stir up popular enthusiasm for 
recruiting. Towards the end of December, however, when it 
appeared likely that disaster would overtake the expedition at 
Salonica, as well as that on Gallipoli, the long-deferred step was 
taken and the remaining British troops were withdrawn from the 
Suvla Bay and Anzac regions on the western shore. Shortly 
afterwards, early in January, 1916, the trenches on the tip of 
the peninsula were abandoned with slight losses. 

The campaign against the Dardanelles, thus brought to an 
inglorious close, had cost the British alone from February to 
December, 1915, some 115,000 men, of whom 26,000 were dead. 
The most telling criticism of the management of the Dardanelles 
operations and at the same time the most vigorous apology for 
the higher strategy which had dictated the inauguration of the 
campaign, was expressed by Winston Spencer Churchill in a 
noteworthy speech before the House of Commons on Novem- 
ber 15 : "It has been proved in this war," he said, "that good 
troops properly supported by artillery can make a direct ad- 
vance two or three miles in the face of any defense. The ad- 
vance, for instance, which took Neuve Chapelle, or Loos, or 
Souchez, if made on the Gallipoli Peninusla, would have settled 
the fate of the Turkish army on the promontory, would probably 
have decided the whole operation, might have determined the 
attitude of the Balkans, might have cut off Germany from the 
East, and might have saved Serbia." 



134 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

More bitter words could have been said. If Serbian entreaties 
had been hearkened to and the whole Allied force on Gallipoli 
had been withdrawn immediately after its August reverses and 
sent into Serbia, it might have deterred Bulgaria from entering 
the war, or, if Bulgaria had persisted, it might have saved Serbia 
from Bulgarian conquest and might have upheld the hands of 
Venizelos in his quarrel with a pro-German Greek king. 

As it was, the Allies had two dismal failures to their debit in 
the Near East. They had failed to defeat the Turks and open 
the Dardanelles. They had also failed to resist the Bulgarians 
and relieve Serbia. One thing only was accomplished : with 
the arrival of the Gallipoli expeditionary force at Salonica in 
December, 1915, and January, 1916, they were enabled to pre- 
vent their Macedonian failure from becoming a disaster. They 
now had enough troops to intrench the territory about Salonica 
and temporarily to hold Constantine to the observance of 
" benevolent neutrality." As to the future, they simply must 
await developments. For the present, the developments else- 
where in the Near East appeared universally favorable to their 
enemies. 

COMPLETION OF GERMAN MASTERY OF THE NEAR EAST 

In October and November, 191 5, Germany had taken two 
important steps toward the mastery of the Near East : the 
fairly powerful state of Bulgaria had become her ally, and 
troublesome Serbia had been "chastised" and conquered. 
Therefrom did many benefits accrue to the cause of the Central 
Empires. In the first place, Turkey was no longer isolated 
from her allies, for express trains could now be run from Berlin 
to Constantinople by way of Belgrade, Nish, and Sofia, and 
German domination of Turkey was strengthened. Secondly, 
there were significant economic benefits : not only were the 
copper mines of Serbia placed at Germany's disposal, but the 
resources of the Balkan peninsula and of the Ottoman Empire 
could be freely drawn upon to replenish the stock of foodstuffs 
and of minerals in the Central Empires, while on the other hand 
a large foreign market was at last procured, despite British 
mastery of the seas, for overstocked German manufacturers. 
Thirdly, the military advantages were obvious : Turkey and 
Bulgaria could now easily be supplied with guns and munitions 
and enabled to utilize their man-power to the full against the 
Allies ; if unable actually to conquer Egypt and India, Turkey 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 135 

could at least so menace those rich outlying dominions of the 
British Crown as to frighten the English and lead perhaps to a 
weakening of British resistance on the Western Front. Finally, 
the respect for Teutonic military prowess on the part of the two 
neutral states in the Near East, — Rumania and Greece, — had 
been enormously increased : Greece seemed quite dominated 
by her pro-German king ; Rumania saw fit to open her grain- 
markets to German buyers. 

To guarantee their conquest of Serbia, the Teutons and Bul- 
garians forthwith set about the conquest of Montenegro and of 
Albania, for otherwise these mountainous regions might become 
dangerous rallying points for Serb and Allied forces. In fact, 
in December, 191 5, Italian garrisons were occupying the Albanian 
ports of Avlona and Durazzo, and as many as 50,000 Serbian 
fugitives were being assembled on the Greek island of Corfu 
and there reorganized into a fighting force. 

It was a fairly easy task to overwhelm Montenegro's little 
army of 30,000 men. General von Koevess, with his Austrian 
army, in December quickly occupied the towns of Jakova, Ipek, 
and Plevlie, on the eastern border of Montenegro ; then, pene- 
trating into the interior, his converging columns defeated the 
Montenegrins in their last desperate stand in the Tara and Lim 
valleys, in January. Meanwhile another Austrian detachment, 
attacking the western frontier, from the Austrian harbor of 
Cattaro, built military roads up the northern slopes of the 
supposedly impregnable but really ill-fortified mountain strong- 
hold of Lovtchen, around which wound the steep road to the 
capital, Cettinje, five miles distant. After three days' bombard- 
ment by the Austrian ships at Cattaro, Mount Lovtchen was 
stormed on January 10, 1916. Lovtchen lost, the Montenegrins 
made no serious attempt to defend their capital, which fell three 
days later. King Nicholas, after some rather questionable 
negotiations with the Austrians, made his way to Italy and 
thence to France, where at Lyons he established his " court." 
His fellow-Serb monarch, King Peter, found a more honorable 
refuge with the Allied army at Salonica. 

Hardly had the Montenegrin capital fallen when General von 
Koevess with his Austrians turned southward into Albania. 
Scutari and the port of San Giovanni di Medua were captured in 
January ,1916, and early in February the Teutonic invaders reached 
the heights of Tirana, in central Albania, ten or fifteen miles from 
Durazzo. In the meantime Bulgarian forces had crossed into 
Albania from southern Serbia and occupied El Bassan. Essad 



136 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Pasha, the pro-Ally chief of the provisional Albanian govern- 
ment, could offer but feeble resistance to the dual invasion; 
and on February 27, the Italians were obliged to evacuate 
Durazzo, under fire of Austrian guns. The larger Italian garrison 
at Avlona, sixty miles south of Durazzo, was not dislodged, 
however, so that from Avlona as a base the Italians were able to 
dominate south-central Albania, while the northern and eastern 
portions of the country remained in Austro-Bulgarian possession. 

Thus was the new German rail connection with Constantinople 
guaranteed against any hostile attack from the west. Monte- 
negro and the strategically important part of Albania, together 
with Serbia, were Teutonic conquests. True, an Allied army 
was intrenched in the vicinity of Salonica and an Italian force 
occupied Avlona, but these forces were too few to undertake a 
successful counter-offensive : they were fearful of a possible 
attack on their rear by the pro-German King Constantine of 
Greece ; and in front they faced the stout Bulgarian army, now 
flushed with victory and thoroughly loyal to the German alliance. 
To the north, Rumania was isolated and wavering in her sym- 
pathy for the Entente ; from Rumania, at least for the present, 
Germany had nothing to fear. With the withdrawal of the 
Anglo-French force from Gallipoli, moreover, no allied soldier 
remained on the soil of European Turkey ; the Ottoman Empire 
had proof positive of the worth and value of alliance with Ger- 
many, and news of rejoicing at Constantinople could be com- 
municated uninterruptedly to Berlin by express-train or by 
telegraph. By force and by prestige Germany had mastered 
the whole Balkan peninsula. The "Drang nach Osten" and 
" Mittel-Europa " were more than words and wishes; they were 
established facts. 

It was now that Asiatic Turkey assumed an importance never 
before recognized. From Asia Minor Turkish sovereignty 
reached out in two directions, — eastward over Armenia and 
Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf and the confines of Russian 
and British spheres of influence in Persia, and southward across 
Syria and Palestine to the Red Sea and the borders of British 
Egypt. Two great arteries traversed these reaches of Turkish 
sovereignty, the German-owned Bagdad railway the one, and 
the Mecca railway the other. By either route powerful blows 
might be struck against British colonial dominion. And to 
strike such blows the 200,000 Turkish soldiers who had been 
engaged on the Gallipoli Peninsula for nearly a year, were now 
available. The " Drang nach Osten" suddenly assumed a 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 137 

terrible significance. It meant not merely the attainment of 
German mastery over the Balkans and Constantinople ; it 
meant also the threat of German mastery of Bagdad and Mecca 
and perhaps of Egypt and India. 

It was not toward Egypt and the south, however, that the 
European Turkish army of 200,000 men was moved in January, 
1 9 16, but rather toward Persia and the east. It seemed prefer- 
able to employ the entire force for a single end ; and complete 
mastery of the Berlin-to-Bagdad route appeared a more service- 
able aim than control of the Suez Canal. The difficulties of 
campaigning in the desert region between Palestine and Egypt 
were much greater, as the Turkish defeats of 1914 had indicated, 
than in the mountains of Armenia and the fertile valleys of 
Mesopotamia. The stakes, too, were less significant : to strike 
at Egypt might merely interrupt or inconvenience British trade 
with the East Indies ; on the other hand, to secure the Persian 
Gulf would certainly threaten British India itself. Besides, 
while no invasion of the Ottoman Empire had yet been attempted 
from Egypt, both British and Russian expeditions were already 
in possession of parts of the eastern marches ; completely to 
rid the Ottoman Empire of Allied armies required an energetic 
campaign in Armenia and Mesopotamia. 

It will be remembered that soon after Turkey entered the 
Great War a small expeditionary force of British regulars and 
Indian colonials had been landed at the head of the Persian Gulf 
as a sort of outpost of defense for British India. In the summer 
of 191 5, without a very distinct purpose and with insignificant 
numbers, the expedition pushed on more than two hundred miles 
into Mesopotamia, until on September 29, it occupied the town 
of Kut-el-Amara on the Tigris. Bagdad, the terminus of the 
famous Turco-German railway, 1 only a hundred miles farther 
up the river, lured the British on, though what they would do 
with Bagdad once they occupied it none could say. Perhaps it 
was intended to offset in England the chagrin which concurrent 
defeats on Gallipoli and in Serbia were causing. At any rate, 
General Sir John Nixon, the commander of the expeditionary 
force, directed General Townshend to proceed to Bagdad. On 
November 22, 191 5, Townshend attacked and carried a line of 
Turkish defenses at Ctesiphon, only eighteen miles from the 
fabled city of the caliphs. Then the tide turned. Townshend, 

1 The actual rail terminus of the Bagdad route was at Samara, seventy-five 
miles farther up the river. Bagdad was about 350 miles from the Persian Gulf 
by the shortest land route ; by river, it was almost 600 miles distant. 



138 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 




GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 139 

overwhelmed by superior numbers, was defeated with a loss of 
4500 out of 20,000 men and driven back to Kut-el-Amara, which 
was promptly surrounded and invested. 

For the relief of Townshend new British forces were dispatched 
from India. Likewise Russian columns were sent to his relief 
along the caravan route from Hamadan in Persia. Such was 
the situation when Teutonic-Bulgarian victories in Macedonia 
assured the security of Constantinople and when Anglo-French 
withdrawal from Gallipoli released almost a quarter of a million 
Turks for military use elsewhere. 

Over the Bagdad railway were transported many of these 
Turkish troops, down into the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. 
There, under the able generalship of the German Marshal von 
der Goltz, they pressed the siege of Kut-el-Amara and fought 
off one relief expedition after another, whether British or Russian. 
Doubtless quicker results would have been achieved by the 
Turks and their German commander, had it not been for a great 
danger which simultaneously threatened them in Armenia and 
which might at any time nullify their immediate efforts in Meso- 
potamia. 

The Grand Duke Nicholas, who, as a result of the Russian 
defeats in Poland, had been transferred to the Caucasus in 
September, 191 5, had been marshaling an army of 180,000 men 
in preparation for a big offensive in Armenia l in the spring of 
1916, but the plight of the British in Mesopotamia and the re- 
lease of 200,000 Turks in January, 1916, for service in Asia, 
decided him to attack forthwith. The very unexpected char- 
acter of the attack, in the dead of winter, with roads blocked by 
snow and the thermometer registering from twenty to forty 
degrees below zero, may account for the ease with which at the 
outset the unsuspecting Turks were routed. Under the actual 

1 Christian Armenia, throughout the first eight months of 1915, had been the 
scene of the most wholesale and cold-blooded massacres in the long history of the 
distracted country. At Angora, Bitlis, Mush, Diarbekr, at Trebizond and Van, 
even at distant Mosul, many thousands were butchered like sheep, partly by the 
gendarmerie, partly by the mob. Women were violated, and they and their chil- 
dren were shamelessly sold to Turkish harems and houses of ill-fame. Hundreds of 
wretched creatures were driven into the deserts and mountains to perish miserably 
of starvation. The protesting voices were few and ineffective : the sheikh-ul-Islam 
resigned ; the pope remonstrated ; the American ambassador at Constantinople did 
his best. The Turkish Government was obdurate: "I am taking the necessary 
steps," its premier told the American ambassador, "to make it impossible for the 
Armenians ever to utter the word autonomy during the next fifty years." And the 
Germans, quite used themselves to committing outrages in Belgium, shuddered 
not at the newest and gravest atrocities inflicted by their friends, the Mohammedan 
Turks, upon the hapless and helpless Christian Armenians. 



140 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

command of General Yudenitch, who was intrusted with the 
execution of the Grand Duke's design, the Russian columns 
advanced south westward from the Russo-Turkish Caucasian 
frontier, and about the middle of January, 1916, began their 
march through bleak mountain passes leading into Turkish 
Armenia. The northern column isolated one Turkish corps 
and drove it rapidly northward to the shores of the Black Sea ; 
the southern column cut off two divisions from the main Turkish 
army ; while the central column, following the highway from 
Sarikamish toward Erzerum, inflicted a crushing defeat on three 
Turkish divisions at Kuprikeui, January 16-18, and forced the 
crossing of the Araxes River in the midst of a blinding snowstorm. 
Ruthlessly pursued by Cossack cavalry, the Turkish infantry 
retired in disorder, strewing the road from Kuprikeui to Erze- 
rum with discarded rifles, abandoned cannon, and half-frozen 
stragglers. 

Against Erzerum, reputed to be the strongest fortified city in 
Asiatic Turkey, General Yudenitch now massed his heavy ar- 
tillery. By a brilliant feat of arms a Siberian division planted 
its 8-inch guns on supposedly inaccessible peaks commanding 
the northernmost of Erzerum's many outlying forts. The 
fortified ridge just to the east of the city was thus outflanked 
and successfully stormed. Whereupon, without waiting to test 
the antiquated inner circle of redoubts and ramparts, the German 
staff officers and the Turkish garrison precipitately evacuated 
Erzerum, on February 16, 1916, leaving 323 guns and a huge 
stock of military supplies to fall into the hands of the victorious 
Russians. Only 13,000 prisoners were taken, but the total 
Turkish casualties in the whole campaign were estimated at 
60,000. The capture of Erzerum was rightly recognized as a 
particularly brilliant piece of strategy. 

Two days after the fall of Erzerum, the Turks lost the town of 
Mush to the southern column of the Grand Duke Nicholas's 
invading army, and on March 2, the important city of Bitlis, 
south of Erzerum and west of Lake Van. The northern column 
of the Russian forces, sweeping the Black Sea coast from Batum 
westwards, captured Trebizond on April 18 and pushed on as 
far as Platana. By April, 191 6, the greater part of Turkish 
Armenia was in Russian hands, and Russia had demonstrated 
to the world that despite her sorry reverses of the preceding 
summer in Poland and Lithuania she was still in the war and was 
still a military power to be reckoned with. Optimists were not 
lacking among Entente publicists who perceived in the Grand 



GERMANY MASTERS THE NEAR EAST 141 



Duke Nicholas's Armenian offensive not only certain relief to 
the beleaguered British in Mesopotamia but a probable aid to 
Allied fortunes in the Balkans. 

Again these Entente publicists were too optimistic. By 
April, 1916, the full force of Turkey's released Gallipoli army 
could be brought to bear in Mesopotamia and Armenia. Vigor- 
ously did Von der Goltz press the siege of Kut-el-Amara. A 
British relief detachment essayed in vain to break its way 
through the Turkish line at Sanna-i-yat, sixteen miles east of 




Mesopotamia and Its Strategic Position 

Kut. So completely was Kut-el-Amara invested that no pro- 
visions could be sent to the famished garrison except by air- 
plane. Nine tons of supplies reached General Townshend by 
this means in April, but they were not enough. At last the 
pressure of hunger constrained Townshend to surrender, on 
April 29, 1916, after enduring a siege of 143 days, — the only 
example of a protracted siege, except that of Przemysl, in the 
whole course of the Great War. Depleted by fighting and 
famine, Townshend's force at the time of surrender numbered 
only eight thousand men. Responsibility for the disastrous 
Bagdad venture of the British rested not so much on General 



142 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Townshend as on General Nixon and the military authorities 
in India. Public opinion concurred in the verdict of a prominent 
British historian of the war that "on every ground of strategy 
and common sense" Townshend's expedition "was unjustifiable." 
The fall of Kut-el-Amara enabled the Turks thenceforth to 
devote almost all their force and energy to staying further ad- 
vance of the Russians in Armenia. It is true that the Grand 
Duke Nicholas enjoyed a brief good fortune in July, 1916 ; he 
then advanced to, and captured, the city of Erzingian, no miles 
west of Erzerum. But this marked the high tide of Russian 
success. Thenceforth the Russians in Asiatic Turkey were 
strictly on the defensive, and in August, Bitlis was abandoned. 
In the meantime the Russian column which had gone to the relief 
of the British in Mesopotamia was routed by the Turks and 
pursued back into Persia, past Kerind, Kermanshah, and Hama- 
dan. If the Turks had lost part of Armenia, they had at least 
saved Bagdad and carried the war into Persia. 

By the summer of 1916, Germany, with the aid of Austria- 
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, had transformed "Mittel- 
Europa" from a dream to a reality and had pushed far the 
"Drang nach Osten." She now enjoyed uninterrupted and 
unmenaced communication and commerce with Constantinople 
not only, but far away, over the two great arteries of Asiatic 
Turkey, with Damascus, Jerusalem, and Mecca, and with Bagdad 
likewise. Her vassal Ottomans were actually striking into Persia ; 
they might yet irrupt into India. With the exception of some 
Italians in inaccessible southern Albania, an Allied force at 
precarious Salonica, a Russian army in mountainous Armenia, 
and a'handful of British at the head of the Persian Gulf, Germany 
was unopposed in her mastery of that whole vast region of south- 
eastern Europe and southwestern Asia which goes by the name 
of the Near East. 

To her spectacular defeat of Russia and conquest of Poland 
was thus added Germany's equally spectacular mastery of the 
Near East. But was Germany thereby really winning the 
Great War? Not so long as there was an unyielding Western 
Front. To win the war, Germany simply must smash allied 
resistance in France. 



CHAPTER VIII 
GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 
TEUTONIC OPTIMISM AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916 

If military exploits had been as conclusive as they had been 
spectacular, Germany should have won the Great War in 1916 
and imposed a Pax Germanica upon the world. Certainly the 
most spectacular achievements at arms from August, 19 14, to 
January, 19 16, had been Teutonic; and German statesmen and 
publicists expressed a puzzled inability to understand the stub- 
born refusal of the Entente Powers to sue for peace. 

Spectacular had been the Teutonic " drives." In 1914 Bel- 
gium and the richest section of France had been overrun and 
occupied by German armies. In the summer of 191 5 the Russian 
"steam roller" had been trundled back from Galicia and from 
Russian Poland to the Riga-Dvinsk-Tarnopol line in a badly bat- 
tered condition. In the autumn of 191 5 Bulgaria had been won 
over to the Turco-Teutonic coalition and had helped Field Mar- 
shal von Mackensen to conquer Serbia and master the Near East. 

As a result of these spectacular "drives," the armed forces of 
the Central Empires not only had preserved their own lands 
practically inviolate, but had obtained extensive and valuable 
conquests at their opponents' expense. It was notable that 
whereas not a single Entente soldier stood on the soil of Germany 
or Austria-Hungary, except a few. Frenchmen in one corner of 
upper Alsace and some Italians on a narrow strip near the 
Isonzo, the territory dominated by the Teutonic alliance had been 
expanded to embrace Belgium, northern France, Poland, parts 
of Lithuania and the Baltic Provinces, Serbia, Montenegro, and 
a portion of Albania. With the adherence of Turkey and Bul- 
garia to the Teutonic Alliance, and the triumphs of those states 
at the close of 191 5, a Germanized Mittel-Europa could be said to 
stretch from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, from the Baltic 
to the Red Sea, from Lithuania and Ukrainia to Picardy and 
Champagne. It was the greatest achievement in empire-building 
on the continent of Europe since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

143 



144 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Moreover, this Germanized Mittel-Europa appeared to possess 
certain qualities of strength and endurance lacking in whole or 
in part to the hostile coalition. In the first place, it was a con- 
federation of four states — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bul- 
garia, and Turkey — of which the first was head and shoulders 
above the other three in prowess and prestige, with the result 
that there was relative unity of direction in the confederation's 
policies and actions. Bedm completely overshadowed Vienna, 
Sofia, and Constantinople ; and the chiefs of staff of Turkey, 
Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary had their plans mapped out for 
them and much of their equipment supplied them by the German 
High Command. At a time when Berlin could speak authori- 
tatively for Mittel-Europa, the opposing Powers still acted in 
most respects independently of one another, and in Entente 
counsels something like equal weight had to be given to fre- 
quently diverse decisions of Paris, Petrograd, London, and Rome. 
Unity of plan was an important asset of the Central Powers as 
diversity was a liability of the Entente. 

Secondly, Germanized Mittel-Europa occupied a geographical 
position of great strategic value. It completely isolated Russia 
from her Western Allies, save for most faulty transportation 
from the White Sea or over the Siberian railway. Its extent was 
sufficiently wide and continuous and its economic resources and 
industry sufficiently varied to give promise of enabling its civil- 
ian population to support life without suffering too severe 
hardship from British control of the seas. Its inclusion of Bel- 
gium, northern France, and Poland provided it with a wealth of 
minerals useful alike to normal manufacturing and to abnormal 
production of munitions of war. Moreover, its compactness and 
its possession of an enviable network of railways admitted of 
prompt and efficient transfer of troops from one frontier to 
another, and, therefore, of concentration against hostile Powers 
in turn. If Mittel-Europa was a kind of beleagured empire, it 
had at any rate an advantage of interior lines of communication, 
which, taken in conjunction with its advantage of unified com- 
mand, seemingly compensated it for its lesser number of poten- 
tial soldiers. 

To husband the supply of military man-power in Mittel- 
Europa, the German government was already planning to deport 
laborers from conquered districts, notably Belgium l and northern 

1 The deportation of Belgians was formally inaugurated by decree of the Ger- 
man military authorities on October 3, iqi6. By the beginning of December, 
some hundred thousand had already been deported with great cruelty and amidst 
heartrending scenes. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 145 

France, and to compel them to work in German factories, thereby 
releasing many Teutonic laborers for active service with the 
colors. And to add to the resources of man-power, the Central 
Empires sought to construct several dependent states out of 
"oppressed nationalities." There was talk, for example, about 
this time of creating a South Slav state under the protection of 
Austria-Hungary and the nominal sovereignty of a Monte- 
negrin prince who would ally himself with the Habsburg family. 
There was an attempt also to sow dissension in Belgium between 
Walloons and Flemings and to encourage the latter to establish 
a Flemish government under the protection of Germany. There 
was an effort likewise to arouse a desire in the Russian Baltic 
Provinces either for outright annexation to Prussia or for the 
founding of an autonomous state under a German prince ; and 
there were curious appeals to Polish patriots to perceive in 
Germany the staunch friend of Polish nationalism. Little 
progress had so far been made in any of these directions, but the 
Pan-Germans and other fanatical advocates of Mittel-Europa 
entertained high hopes for the future. 

Teutonic optimists at the beginning of 19 16 pointed with 
pride and assurance not only to the construction of mighty 
Mittel-Europa during the preceding year and a half and to the 
military discomfiture in turn of Belgians, French, Russians, and 
Serbs, but also to what they imagined to be a resulting war- 
weariness or even political unrest in the chief Entente countries. 
Italy, it was thought, had entered the war haltingly, had fought 
lamely, and, in view of the fact that as yet she had not ventured 
to declare war against Germany, might be expected to limp off 
the battlefield if given half a chance. Russia was cast down by 
defeat and by revelations of scandalous inefficiency and corrup- 
tion, not to say treason, among her generals and her bureau- 
crats ; she was honeycombed with popular disaffection and revo- 
lutionary doctrine. France, still the very heart and soul of the 
coalition hostile to Mittel-Europa, was believed to be rapidly 
exhausting her never superfluous man-power ; and the immi- 
nence of a complete break in French morale was the lesson drawn 
by Germans from the resignation of the Viviani Cabinet in 
October, 1915, and from the creation, seemingly "as a last resort," 
of a Ministry of All the Talents, including Aristide Briand as 
premier, representatives of all parties (even the Monarchist), 
and eight former prime ministers. Apparently France had 
reached the end of her rope and would make but one more stand. 

As for Great Britain the situation was somewhat different. 



146 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

So far Germany had been unable to strike a direct blow at Eng- 
land and had had to witness, without power to prevent, the 
quick mastery of the seas by the British navy and the gradual 
occupation of her own distant colonies by Allied forces ; and with 
the exception of a short-lived Boer insurrection in South Africa, 
no rebellion had as yet broken out in any part of the far-flung 
British Empire. Nevertheless, Germans at the beginning of 
1916 professed greater optimism than ever as to the eventual 
defeat and humiliation of their great maritime rival. They 
insisted that the fate of colonial dominion would be settled on the 
battlefields of Continental Europe ; and on these battlefields 
were the Teutons not winning victory after victory? They in- 
sisted, too, that British mastery of the seas was becoming a more 
serious obstacle to the welfare of neutral states than the success 
of the Teutonic Powers, and would surely prove in a brief while 
a veritable boomerang : quite probably it would cause the Scan- 
dinavian countries, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, 
and the states of Latin America to unite in an Armed Neutrality 
which would recognize that " freedom of the seas" was dependent 
on British failure and German triumph. But even if such an 
auxiliary "Armed Neutrality" should not materialize, Germany 
might still confidently expect Britain's vanquishment. British 
prestige had recently suffered grievously from fiascoes at the 
Dardanelles, in Serbia, and in Mesopotamia ; and millions in 
India, who only wanted a favorable opportunity, would presum- 
ably welcome with open arms the Turco-German deliverers now 
en route over the Bagdad Railway to Persia and the East. Be- 
sides, the glowing embers of Irish discontent would require only 
a little kindling from Germany to be fanned into consuming flame. 
And there were signs, as interpreted by Teutonic opti- 
mists, which would betoken a war-weariness in England. The 
war was becoming a heavy charge on British wealth. Whereas 
the total public debt of Great Britain amounted in March, 1914, 
to three and a quarter billions of dollars, it had grown by war 
credits, including those of February, 1916, to nearly ten and a 
half billions, a sum which Premier Asquith characterized as not 
only beyond precedent, but actually beyond the imagination of 
the financiers of England or of any other country. Moreover, 
the war was taking an unexpectedly heavy toll of Britain's 
young manhood. British losses in battle up to January, 1916, 
numbered 550,000, of whom 128,000 were dead. Yet despite 
such heavy toll, little progress appeared to have been made. 
That the authorities themselves were dissatisfied was evidenced 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 147 

by the removal of Sir John French * from the supreme command 
of the British armies in France in December, 191 5, and his super- 
session by Sir Douglas Haig. That the British people were as 
dissatisfied as their government, and more apathetic, was 
gathered from the fact that although the rate of voluntary 
recruiting for military service had fallen very low by October, 
191 5, the country at large evinced much opposition to any de- 
parture from the traditional British policy of voluntary enlist- 
ment and stubbornly resisted any effort to substitute conscrip- 
tion. It was only after Lord Derby had conducted a final three- 
months' campaign for soldier-volunteers throughout the length 
and breadth of the British Isles that the Parliament was induced, 
in January, 1916, to enact a conscription measure, and even this 
was to apply only to unmarried men in England, Scotland, and 
Wales. 2 To the Germans it was obvious that the British armies 
had reached their maximum size, under the volunteer system, 
by the autumn of 19 15, and that, inasmuch as the new con- 
scripts could not properly be trained and rendered effective 
before the summer of 19 16, the coming spring was most oppor- 
tune for knock-out blows. 

In fact, little more need be done. While more or less subtle 
propagandists would be equipped with money and letters of 
introduction, with typewriters and stenographers, with secret 
inks and mysterious formulas for bomb-making, and turned loose 
in neutral countries to win converts to the precepts and prac- 
tices of Kultur, the doughty armed hosts of the Teutonic coalition 
would be provided with an extra supply of howitzers and machine- 
guns, airplanes and Zeppelins, asphyxiating gases and poison for 
wells, and in one supreme effort on the chief European fronts 
would illustrate the irresistible might of Kultur in practical 
operation. The Austro- Germans already in Lithuania would 
suffice to put the finishing touches on crumbling Russia. The 
main armies of Austria-Hungary would be mobilized in the 
Trentino for a decisive drive into the vitals of desponding Italy. 
And the German legions, now disengaged elsewhere, could be 
consolidated into one mass that at last would break down the 
barriers to Paris and reduce France to her appropriate position 
as a tertiary power, as a lesser satellite to the full, glorious orb 
oiMittel-Europa. With Russia, Italy, and France crushed, and 
with despair and rebellion at home, what could Great Britain do ? 

1 Sir John French was created Viscount French of Ypres. 

2 Subsequently, in May, 1916, the Conscription Act was extended to married 
men, but Ireland remained exempted from its provisions. 



148 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Early in 1916 Teutonic optimism reached its zenith. There 
was no talk at Berlin of conciliation or compromise. It was to be 
a victory overwhelming and complete. 

THE DIFFICULTY AT VERDUN: "THEY SHALL NOT PASS" 

In planning war against combined Russia and France, the 
German General Staff had emphasized the necessity of crushing 
France first and then turning at leisure against slow-moving 
Russia. But France had not been crushed, in 1914. The ever 
memorable battle of the Marne had saved her field army, her 
capital, and her most important fortresses — Verdun, Toul, 
Epinal, and Bclfort. And throughout 191 5, while Germany 
was defeating Russia, France remained unconquered and un- 
daunted. 

At the beginning of 1916, therefore, the German General 
Staff, confronted with a new situation, adopted a new plan. 
The Russians were to be held at bay far from Germany's eastern 
frontier, while on the west a final irresistible blow would be dealt 
the French. If France could be convinced that further sacri- 
fices for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine would be futile, would 
not a victorious peace then be in sight for Germany? If this 
train of thought had not of itself been sufficiently cogent to the 
German General Staff, the preparations which General Toff re 
was making for a great Anglo-French Drive would have been 
reason enough for a German mast er-attack upon France. France 
was training her classes of 1916 and 191 7, according to War 
Minister Gallieni's own statement, in readiness for "the moment 
when the intensive production of armaments and of munitions, 
together with the reenforcement of the battle-line with new 
masses of men, may permit new and decisive efforts." Great 
Britain, thanks to the Derby recruiting campaign and the Jan- 
uary conscription bill, might be expected to throw another 
million of men into France in the spring, and her two thousand 
government-controlled factories were already producing tre- 
mendous and ever-increasing supplies of munitions. The antici- 
pated Anglo-French offensive of [916 would be of unprecedented 
power; and, if Russia and Italy should attack simultaneously, 
Falkcnhayn, the German Chief of Staff, would then be unable 
to transfer troops to France without inviting disaster on the 
other fronts. Accordingly, it was imperative to forestall the 
Anglo-French offensive and if possible to compel Joffre'to put 
his half-trained reserves into the battle-line prematurely. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 149 

Strategic and political considerations made Verdun the first 
objective of the new German offensive against France. To be 
sure, the concrete-and-steel forts and the disappearing armored 
turrets, upon which French engineers had prided themselves 
before the war, were no longer considered of great military value, 
since 13-inch howitzers had demonstrated the frailty of Belgian 
fortifications. But the strategic importance of Verdun lay less in 
its fortifications than in its position. The army that possessed 
Verdun possessed the Heights of the Meuse, a plateau or ridge 
some five miles broad extending north and south like a natural 
palisade, just east of the Meuse river, on which Verdun is situ- 
ated. Their position on the Heights of the Meuse would be of 
incalculable advantage to the French when the time came for an 
attempt to reconquer Lorraine ; impetuously descending the 
slopes to push the Germans back across the plain of the Woevre, 
to the eastward, the French troops would be supported by heavy 
artillery mounted on hilltops five hundred feet or more above the 
plain, while the Germans would find it extremely difficult to 
emplace their heavy artillery on the clayey soil of the Woevre. 
Should the French lose the Heights of the Meuse, not only would 
a French attack on Lorraine be out of the question, but for 
defensive purposes no new line could be found of such great 
natural strength. 

The political considerations which recommended a German 
thrust at Verdun may be stated briefly : first, if France lost 
Verdun and the Heights of the Meuse, French patriots would 
lose hope of realizing their chief purpose in the war — the recon- 
quest of Alsace-Lorraine — and might consent to make peace ; 
secondly, inasmuch as the German Crown Prince commanded 
the Verdun sector, a victory there would enhance the prestige of 
the heir to the imperial throne; thirdly, certain influential ele- 
ments in the Reichstag, notably the Conservative and National 
Liberal parties, who at the time were bitterly criticizing the 
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg for his tendency to yield to 
American remonstrances against ruthless - submarine warfare, 
might be silenced by a great success like the capture of Verdun. 

Every effort was made to disguise the German preparations 
for the intended move against Verdun. During January and 
February, 1916, while corps after corps was quietly taking its 
place in the Crown Prince's lines, while hundreds of 4-inch, 7- 
inch, 13-inch, and even 17-inch guns were being massed in the 
forests of Verdun, feints were being made against a dozen other 
sectors of the Anglo-French front. An attack against Nieuport 



ISO A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

on January 24, and rumors of troop movements through Bel- 
gium, seemed to forecast a new drive toward Calais ; on the 
Somme, the village of Frise was captured by the Germans ; in 
Artois, on the bitterly contested slopes of Vimy Ridge, Prince 
Rupprecht of Bavaria delivered a series of attacks with daily 
mine-explosions and infantry assaults ; at the extreme southern 
end of the Western Front, the French lines southwest of Altkirch 
were assailed, and 15-inch shells began to drop into the French 
fortress of Belfort like heralds of an approaching storm. Mean- 
while the Crown Prince had concentrated fourteen German 
divisions against the French trenches eight and a half miles north 
of Verdun. All was ready for the great effort. 

A terrific bombardment preceded the first attack, on February 
21, 19 1 6. Never had artillery fire been of such withering inten- 
sity. High explosive shells fairly obliterated the French first- 
line trenches. Groves which might have afforded shelter to 
French artillery were wiped out of existence, trees being up- 
rooted and shattered into splinters. Under the terrible hail of 
fire, the French soldiers with their machine-guns and "75s" — 
those that escaped destruction — waited with grim determina- 
tion to make the German infantry pay heavily for its advance. 
But the Germans did not intend to sacrifice their men needlessly. 
No advance was attempted until scouts and sappers had cau- 
tiously stolen forward to make sure that the bombardment had 
accomplished its work of destruction. Then, while the German 
guns lengthened their range so as to place a "curtain of fire" in 
the rear of the French trenches, cutting off supplies and rein- 
forcements, the German infantry with comparative safety oc- 
cupied the ruined French first line. This was considered auspi- 
cious. Step by step the German howitzers would blast their 
way into Verdun; there would be no need of reckless infantry 
charges. 

At first the German offensive against Verdun proceeded with 
the mechanical regularity of clockwork. In four days the Ger- 
mans progressed over four miles, until at Douaumont they 
reached the first of the outlying permanent forts of Verdun. At 
this time eighteen divisions were massed on a front of four and 
one-half miles from the Cote du Poivre (Pepper Ridge) to Hardau- 
mont. Throughout the day of February 25 the German infan- 
try, wave upon wave, surged up the snow-covered slopes of the 
Douaumont Hill, only to recede under the murderous fire of 
French mitrailleuses and 75-millimeter guns. Towards evening 
a supreme assault, viewed from a distant hill by the Emperor 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 151 

himself, carried Fort Douaumont. The fort itself was a crum- 
bling heap of ruins, but the hilltop (388 meters high) on which it 
was situated overlooked all the surrounding country and com- 
manded a clear view of Verdun, less than five miles to the south- 
west. If the French could be hurled back from this their 
strongest natural position, before heavy reinforcements arrived 
and while the defense was still suffering from the initial shock 
of the German onslaught, Verdun's fate would be almost 
certain. 

But French reinforcements, which had been withheld until 
General Joffre was sure the Verdun attack was not simply another 
feint, arrived in the nick of time, and with them arrived General 
Petain, on the very day of Fort Douaumont's fall. Petain in- 
fused new energy into the demoralized defense. He had already 
demonstrated his righting temper in the battle of Artois (spring 
and summer of 191 5) and in the Champagne offensive (Septem- 
ber, 191 5) ; before the war he had been an inconspicuous colonel, 
one of the many Catholic army officers who could scarce hope for 
promotion while anti-clerical politics held sway in the army ; in 
actual warfare, however, his ability could not be ignored and he 
had speedily won the rank of general and the reputation of being 
one of Joffre's most brilliant subordinates. 

On February 26, 1916, the morning after his arrival, Petain 
ordered a counter-attack. By an impetuous charge the Ger- 
mans were swept back down the hillside, and, although a German 
regiment remained ensconced in Fort Douaumont, possession of 
the fort was useless without command of the approaches and 
communicating trenches. For four days more the battle raged 
incessantly about the fort and village of Douaumont, until on 
March 1 the German attack slackened. That brief lull marked 
the passing of the crisis. The impact of the German drive had 
been broken before a real breach had been made in the vital 
defenses of Verdun ; the French had recovered from their sur- 
prise, and now with heavy reinforcements and ample supplies, 
which an endless train of motor lorries was ceaselessly pouring 
into Verdun, they were ready to dispute every inch of ground. 

During the first phase of the battle, from February 21 to 29, 
the brunt of the German drive had been borne by the French 
lines on the Heights of the Meuse, where the Germans had bat- 
tered their way four miles southward to the Douaumont-Pepper 
Ridge position. Even more ground had been gained, though at 
smaller cost, in the Woevre plain, directly east of Verdun, where 
the French had been pushed back some six miles. On March 1, 



152 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

however, the French were standing as firmly at Eix and Fresnes, 
east of Verdun, as at Pepper Hill and Douaumont, north of the 
city. 

So long as there was hope of capturing Verdun with a moderate 
sacrifice of life, military as well as political wisdom justified the 
German offensive. But when the French lines, instead of crump- 
ling fatally, stiffened resolutely, the whole aspect of the offensive 
was altered. Henceforth the Crown Prince would be hurling 
his men against carefully prepared, cunningly concealed, and 
adequately manned defenses. As the French brought up their 
heavy guns, the German advantage in artillery would dwindle 
and disappear. Victory could be won neither swiftly enough to 
terrify France nor cheaply enough to profit Germany. Yet the 
German General Staff decided to purchase victory, cost what it 
might. Discontinuance of the battle after the check at Douau- 
mont would be a humiliating confession of defeat and a severe 
blow to the prestige of German arms ; the name of the Crown 
Prince, already associated with failure in the battle of the Marne, 
would be brought into further disrepute ; and the political situa- 
tion of the German government would be extremely embar- 
rassing as it attempted to face the scathing criticism of the 
Tirpitz party, which demanded ruthless submarine warfare, and 
the bitter complaints of an independent faction of the Socialists, 
who voiced the desire of a growing number of German civilians 
for food and for peace. The battle of Verdun, therefore, must 
continue. 

In the second phase of the struggle for Verdun, interest shifted 
to the west bank of the Meuse. Prior to March i, there had 
been little fighting except on the narrow front, six or seven miles 
in length, where the French line straddled the Heights of the 
Meuse, north of Verdun ; the twelve-mile French sector east of the 
Heights, it is true, had been forced out of the Woevre plain ; but 
west of the Meuse only artillery had been active. Owing to the 
fact that the hills west of the Meuse were much less imposing than 
those on the other bank — for example, Dead Man's Hill, the key 
of the situation on the western bank, was 280 feet lower than 
Douaumont — an advance there would be easier than east of the 
Meuse; furthermore, it seemed imperative to push the line west 
of the Meuse at least as far south as the line east of the river, 
since the French guns on the hills west of the Meuse were now in 
a position to rake the German line on the opposite bank from the 
flank and rear and by their fire to prevent an effective assault on 
Pepper Ridge. If the Crown Prince was to turn the Douaumont 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 153 

position by capturing Pepper Ridge, the menace from across the 
Meuse must be removed. 

So on March 2, 1916, the second phase of the battle of 
Verdun began with an attack upon the French positions west of 
the Meuse. By this time, however, the element of surprise con- 
tributed nothing to the German advance ; the French were pre- 
pared to defend with dogged determination every inch of ground. 
For nearly two weeks the Germans struggled to master Goose 
Ridge, immediately west of the Meuse ; for three weeks more they 
spent munitions and life recklessly in efforts to dominate Dead 
Man's Hill, farther west. From March 17 to April 8, the Ger- 
man advance amounted to one mile on a six-mile front. Still 
determined to conquer at any cost, the Crown Prince exhausted 
nine infantry divisions in a ferocious assault against the whole 
French line west of the Meuse, April 9-1 1. Yet in spite of the 
frightful carnage, Dead Man's Hill could not be conquered. 

Not only west of the Meuse, but east of the river too, the 
Germans during March and April expended their strength in 
heroic efforts, but without decisive results. Ruined Douaumont 
changed hands several times, and the Germans got as far as the 
village of Vaux — but no farther. While both sides lay ex- 
hausted in the region of Vaux and Douaumont, the Germans 
with indefatigable energy prepared to launch a new attack upon 
Pepper Ridge. Their howitzers rained high-explosive shells on 
the ridge until it seemed that the French trenches must be anni- 
hilated ; then confidently on April 18 twelve German regiments 
made the assault ; but from the shattered French trenches the 
machine-guns spoke with so deadly an effect that the Germans 
recoiled in dismay. 

The repulse at Pepper Ridge on April 18 and at Dead Man's 
Hill on April 9-1 1 concluded the second phase of the great battle 
for Verdun. French and British military critics already de- 
clared that "the battle of Verdun is won." True, throughout 
April and May each daily bulletin gave news of a mine exploded, 
a gas-attack resisted, a trench gained by the use of jets of liquid 
fire, a clash of grenadiers, or a duel of artillery. But having 
tested the French lines on both sides of the Meuse, the Germans 
at last knew that Verdun could not be gained by a few sledge- 
hammer blows, and henceforth they fought not with the confident 
expectation of victory, but rather with the fury of baffled but 
indomitable determination. 

Towards the end of May, 1916, the third phase of the battle 
of Verdun was inaugurated by desperate and most sanguinary 



154 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



onslaughts on each side of the Meuse. The climax of the cam- 
paign on the western bank was reached on May 29, when sixty 
German batteries of heavy artillery poured a torrent of high- 
explosive shells, continuing twelve hours, on the whole French 




line from Cumieres to Avocourt, and a new infantry charge was 
launched in which at least five fresh divisions participated. The 
French had been expelled from Cumieres, and the summit of 
Dead Man's Hill had been gained, but the French still clung 
tenaciously to the southern slopes of the hill. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 155 

Simultaneously, on the east side of the Meuse, the Germans 
foiled an attempt of General Nivelle l to secure Douaumont and 
then moved in force against Fort Vaux. After a struggle of 
inconceivable fury the Germans captured Fort Vaux on June 7 
and thus obtained, with Fort Douaumont, two positions in the 
outer ring of Verdun's permanent fortifications. Of the numer- 
ous remaining obstacles, the next would be Fort Souville or 
rather the hill (precisely the same altitude as Douaumont) upon 
which Fort Souville was situated, not quite two miles southwest 
of Fort Vaux and a little more than two miles directly south of 
Fort Douaumont. Fort Souville might be approached either 
from the north, by way of Thiaumont Redoubt and Fleury, or 
from the northwest, by way of Damloup Redoubt. The Ger- 
mans during June tried both of these approaches. Thiaumont 
Redoubt and Fleury were gained on June 23-24, but were sub- 
sequently recaptured by the French ; similarly, Damloup Re- 
doubt was captured, recaptured, and captured again. Through- 
out July and August Fleury and the two redoubts repeatedly 
changed hands. Never did the Germans reach Fort Souville. 
Never were they able to drive the French from the southern 
slopes of Dead Man's Hill. Never was the hold of the French 
on Verdun relinquished. 

From February to July, 1916, the Germans had gained about 
130 square miles of battle-scarred French territory north and 
east of Verdun, with two demolished forts and desolate ruins 
of two-score villages. As the price of this gain, probably as many 
as three hundred thousand German soldiers had laid down their 
lives, or fallen wounded on the field of battle, or been captured 
by the French. The Crown Prince had played for high stakes 
and had lost. The great plan to take Verdun by surprise, to 
strike consternation into the heart of the French nation, to 
forestall an Anglo-French offensive, had obviously gone wrong; 
and Germany faced the discouraging fact that her tremendous 
sacrifices had failed of their chief purpose, while France, despite 
most serious losses, rejoiced in the consciousness that the battle- 
cry of her heroic sons at Verdun, "Passeront pas!" ("They 
shall not pass!") had been realized in truth. Petain's holding 
battle at Verdun ranks with Joffre's holding battle at the Marne 
as one of the decisive conflicts of the Great War. 

1 Nivelle had succeeded Petain in immediate command of the French defense at 
Verdun early in May, when Petain was promoted to the command of the whole 
army-group on the Soissons- Verdun sector of the Anglo-French front. 



156 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

THE DIFFICULTY IN THE TRENTINO: ITALY'S DEFENSE 

While the Germans were still pounding at Verdun, the Aus- 
trians undertook an offensive against Italy. The Austrians 
elected to deliver their attack in the difficult mountain-country 
of the Trentino rather than in the Isonzo valley, for two reasons : 
first, the Italian line was less strongly held on the Trentino front ; 
and, secondly, an offensive on the Isonzo, even if successful, 
would only drive the main Italian army back into Italian ter- 
ritory, whereas a quick thrust from the Trentino into the Vene- 
tian plain might cut the communications and possibly compel 
the capitulation of the Italian army of the Isonzo. 

Up to May, 19 16, there had been no large-scale fighting in the 
Trentino. Comparatively small detachments of the Italian 
Alpini had penetrated a little way into the inhospitable uplands 
of the western Trentino border through several mountain passes. 
In the south, the Italians had progressed fifteen miles up the 
Adige River to the outskirts of Rovereto, about half the dis- 
tance from the frontier to Trent. In the east, the Italian line 
crossed the Val d'Astico not far from the border, and then cut 
more deeply into Austrian territory west of Borgo, in the Val 
Sugana. 

The Italian line in the Trentino was hardly more than a 
broken series of detached outposts pushed unsystematically into 
the enemy's country. Even for defensive purposes it was 
dangerously weak. The exposed salient southeast of Rovereto 
might easily be crushed between attacks from the west and 
north : no good second-line position had been prepared ; and 
some portions of the front were poorly munitioned and all parts 
were gravely short of artillery. 

Against the ill-prepared Italian lines in the Trentino, on a 
front of less than thirty miles, the Austrians quietly concen- 
trated 400,000 men and a mass of artillery, ready to overwhelm 
the Italians by sheer weight of number and metal. After a 
terrific bombardment on May 14, 1916, the Austrian infantry 
rushed forward all along the front from Rovereto to Borgo, the 
brunt of the attack being toward the center in the general direc- 
tion of the Italian cities of Asiago and Arsiero. At first the 
Austrians were highly successful. The Italians retreated in such 
confusion that in several instances whole regiments lost their 
way and valuable strategic points were sacrificed without a 
struggle. Hurriedly General Cadorna rushed to the rescue and 
attempted to reform the line of the Trentino army. The Aus- 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 157 

trians, relentlessly pursuing, descended the Posina valley to 
Arsiero (seven miles inside the Italian border) and, to the east, 
came down the Val d'Assa as far as Asiago (eight miles inside 
the border), which fell on May 28. The Italian troops that 
should have occupied the commanding height of Pria Fora (two 
miles south of Arsiero) on the night of May 29 lost their way in 
the dark and fell back farther south to the inferior height of 
Monte Ciove. From Pria Fora, at an elevation of nearly 5000 
feet, the victorious Austrians could look down upon Schio and 
Thiene, less than ten miles to the southeast, where the foothills 
of the Venetian Alps gave place to a gently sloping plain, nowhere 
more than 500 feet above sea-level. Only twenty miles from 
Arsiero lay the city of Vicenza ; twenty miles farther, Padua ; 
and another twenty miles across the plain would bring the 
invader to Venice and cut off the whole Italian army on the 
Isonzo. Exultantly the Austrian order of the day, June 1, 
announced that only one small mountain ridge (Ciove) remained 
to be crossed before the army of invasion could swoop down into 
the Venetian plain. 

Fully conscious of the peril, General Cadorna ten days pre- 
viously had ordered the concentration of every available reserve 
at Vicenza, and now on June 3 he issued to the troops holding 
the line south of Arsiero the famous order, "Remember that 
here we defend the soil of our country and the honor of our army. 
These positions are to be defended to the death." And they 
were defended. On Monte Ciove, the key-position, one gallant 
Italian brigade held fast though 4000 of its original 6000 men 
were either killed or wounded. Likewise on Monte Pasubio, 
which had halted the right wing of the advancing Austrians, 
the Italians stood unflinchingly against odds of four to one under 
a nerve-shattering bombardment. For three weeks Austrian 
howitzers deluged Pasubio with high explosives ; for three weeks 
dense masses of Austrian infantry were hurled against the 
Italian left flank ; still the Italian defense stood firm. On 
June 18 the Austrians made their final effort when they 
flung twenty battalions against the Italian right flank, south 
of Asiago, and failed. The Austrian offensive was definitely 
checked. 

As the result of a month's exertions, the Austrians had in- 
flicted serious losses on the Italian army ; they had captured a 
large number of big guns, which the Italians could ill spare ; they 
had recovered 270 miles of Austrian territory; they had con- 
quered 230 square miles of Italian territory; and they had 



158 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

improved their strategic position. 1 On the other hand, the Aus- 
trians had failed to achieve their main purpose; Vicenza and 
Venice were still in Italian hands and the Italian army of the 
Isonzo was still intact and ready to resume the offensive in 
Istria. Nay more, the Austrians in putting forth their great 
effort against Italy had so seriously weakened their Eastern 
front that Russia was able to reorganize her army and invade 
Galicia and Bukowina. German failure at Verdun and Aus- 
trian failure before Vicenza were synchronous blows at Teutonic 
optimism ; 2 they were sure signs that the Central Powers were 
doomed not to win a victorious peace in 1916. 

THE DIFFICULTY IN IRELAND : SUPPRESSION OF REBELLION 

At the very time when the Austrians were preparing to invade 
Italy and when the Germans were making their supreme effort 
against Verdun, Teutonic hopes of rebellion within the British 
Empire promised to reach fruition. In April, 1916, a republic 
was proclaimed in Ireland and fighting took place in Dublin. 

The trouble in Ireland was traceable to the bitter five-hundred- 
year old feud between Englishmen and Irishmen, and particu- 
larly to British treatment of Ireland since 19 10. Between 1910 
and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the Nationalist Party 
in the British House of Commons, representing three-fourths of 
the population of Ireland, had taken nice advantage of the 
exigencies of English politics to wring from the existing Liberal 
government a measure of limited home rule for Ireland. But 
even before the enactment of the measure Irish Unionists(descen- 
dants of Scotch-English settlers in Ulster) had smuggled in arms 
from Germany and had prepared to resist Home Rule by force. 
The situation thus created might have been handled by the 
British Government in either of two ways, according to its 
judgment of Ulster : if Ulster was serious and sober in its oppo- 
sition, then it might behoove the Government to withdraw the 
Home Rule Bill altogether and seek some other means of dealing 
with the Irish question; or, if Ulster was merely factious and 
unreasonable, then it would seem to be the Government's duty 

1 Premier Salandra, as the result of an adverse vote in the Italian Chamber of 
Deputies, resigned in June, 1916, and a new coalition ministry was formed under 
Paolo Boselli with Baron Sonnino still in charge of foreign affairs. 

2 It was a curious coincidence that just as the Crown Prince Frederick William 
of Germany commanded the offensive against Verdun, so the offensive in the Tren- 
tino was directed by the heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian crown — the 

1 Archduke Charles. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 159 

promptly to arrest Sir Edward Carson, the Ulster leader, and to 
crush the opposition. Mr. Asquith's Government did neither. 
It allowed Ulster to raise and discipline a highly efficient army, 
and it went on with its Home Rule Bill. The Nationalists very 
naturally claimed the same right to arm and drill their people, 
and the National Volunteers came into being. The result was 
that in July, 1914, Ireland was split up into two armed camps, 
and the Government halted between two resolutions : on the one 
hand, the Home Rule Bill must be enacted ; on the other hand, 
"Ulster must not be coerced." 

When the Great War actually came, the Home Rule Bill was 
placed on the statute-book, but its operation was suspended ; 
and temporarily Ulsterite and Nationalist leaders vied with one 
another in pledging Ireland's loyal support to the Allied cause. 
As time went on, however, the old distrust and misunderstanding 
reawoke. The Ulsterites became more outspoken that the 
Home Rule Act must never be put in operation, while the Nation- 
alists grew more impatient of delay. When in May, 1915, Mr. 
Asquith admitted to his cabinet several Unionists, including Sir 
Edward Carson, it was apparent that the English Liberals were 
no longer dependent on Irish Nationalists and that Home Rule 
had been pushed into the limbo of forgotten dreams. Henceforth 
the bulk of the Irish people began to lose interest in mere limited 
autonomy and faith in their Parliamentary party ; gradually they 
transferred their interest to demands for full independence and 
their faith to a hitherto unimportant faction — Sinn Fein. 

Sinn Fein — which means "Ourselves" — was a body founded 
in 1905 for purposes not unlike those of the Gaelic League which 
preceded it by a few years. The central idea of the society was 
that the Irish people should recover and assert their nationality 
in every possible way, in language, in dress, and in the develop- 
ment of Irish resources and industries. But unlike the Gaelic 
League, whose program was exclusively educational, the scope 
of the Sinn Fein was political as well. It opposed Irish repre- 
sentation in the British Parliament and attacked alike the 
Unionists and the Nationalists, accusing the latter of being tools 
of the English Liberal Party. It had no patience with the Home 
Rule plan. It held that Ireland should not wait for Home Rule 
as a gift from the British Parliament, but should start measures 
of republican independence on her own account. Self-reliance 
was the Sinn Fein's motto. At the outset it had been a harmless 
academic movement, much frowned upon by Nationalist leaders 
like Redmond and Devlin, and drawing its strength chiefly from 



160 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the enthusiasts of Irish art and poetry, but its prestige had in- 
creased in 1913 through its activity in recruiting volunteers for de- 
fense against the Ulsterites, and the seeming collapse of the Home 
Rule project in 191 5 furthered its popularity. As the Ulsterites ob- 
tained a preponderant voice in the councils of the British Govern- 
ment disappointment and disaffection flourished in other parts of 
Ireland ; and as the Nationalists lost hope, Sinn Fein gained faith 
and followers. 

Sinn Fein was frankly revolutionary, and, though not strictly 
pro-German, was quite as willing to make an alliance with 
Germany as with any other country if thereby an independent 
republic might be established in Ireland. Throughout 191 5 
negotiations of a somewhat obscure character were carried on 
between Germany and Sinn Fein agents, in Germany and also 
in the United States ; funds were collected and military plans 
discussed. Sir Roger Casement, formerly a British consular 
agent and now a devoted disciple of the Sinn Fein, spent several 
months in Germany, visiting prisoners' camps in an attempt 
(for the most part unsuccessful) to form an Irish Brigade, and 
concerting measures with the German Government for abetting 
a revolt in Ireland. It was arranged that German submarines 
should transport Casement and a goodly store of arms and muni- 
tions to the Irish coast and that, simultaneously with their land- 
ing, the Sinn Fein leaders at Dublin should proclaim the republic 
and mobilize the Irish Volunteers ; other German submarines 
would do their best to prevent England from reenforcing her 
garrison in Ireland, and German propagandists along the Western 
Front would strive to secure desertion of Irish soldiers from 
British regiments. It may have been a wild gambler's chance 
from the German standpoint, but in any event Germany had 
nothing to lose by Irish failure, and by Irish success Great 
Britain might lose heavily. 

On the evening of April 20, 1916, a German vessel, disguised 
as a Dutch trader and laden with arms, together with a German 
submarine, arrived off the Kerry coast of Ireland, not far from 
Tralee. Detected by the British patrol, the vessel was sunk and 
its crew captured. Meanwhile Sir Roger Casement and two 
companions were put ashore from the submarine in a collap- 
sible boat, but, without arms and unmet by the local Sinn Feiners, 
Casement was arrested early on Good Friday morning, April 
21, and taken to England. 1 

1 He was subsequently tried for high treason and condemned to death, and was 
executed on August 3. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 161 

The capture of Casement confused the Sinn Feiners. General 
MacNeill, their military chief, hastily canceled the projected 
Easter manceuvers of the Irish Volunteers, and the leaders at 
Dublin were thus deprived of immediate effective aid. Never- 
theless the standard of revolt was raised. On Easter Monday, 
April 24, armed bands seized St. Stephen's Green, the post office, 
and other places in the center of Dublin. At the same time a 
proclamation was issued asserting the right of Ireland to national 
existence and announcing the establishment of a republic, based 
on adult suffrage and complete civil and religious liberty, 
equality, and fraternity. The flag of the new state — green 
and gold — was unfurled, and a provisional government was 
set up under Padraic Pearse as president and James Connolly as 
commandant. 

After a sharp struggle in which many were killed and wounded, 
including a considerable number of civilians, the British forces, 
under General Sir John Maxwell, who had formerly commanded 
in Egypt, succeeded in overpowering the rebels, though not until 
artillery and machine-guns had been brought into action. On 
April 29, Provisional President Pearse ordered unconditional 
surrender, in order to prevent useless slaughter, and on the next 
day the rebels laid down their arms. In Dublin 300 Irish had 
been killed and 1800 made prisoners. The British troops suf- 
fered 521 casualties. The punishment inflicted by the British 
authorities was extremely severe. Pearse and' fourteen others 
were tried by court-martial and shot ; more were condemned to 
long terms in prison ; several hundred were deported to England 
and gathered in detention-camps ; and as many as 3000 were 
arrested. 

Germany gained nothing by the abortive Irish rebellion, and 
Great Britain was not vitally handicapped in her prosecution of 
the war. The Irish Nationalists disavowed the Sinn Feiners as 
promptly and as fully as did the Ulsterites, and there was no seri- 
ous disaffection among Irish troops in France. Subsequently, 
the severity meted out to the rebels by the British Government 
reacted in favor of the Sinn Fein, and the inability or unwill- 
ingness of the coalition ministry to govern Ireland except at the 
point of the bayonet deflected many British troops from France. 
But these developments were too late to alter in any respect the 
solemn fact that in 191 6 Germany was failing to obtain a mil- 
itary decision. 



162 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

DIFFICULTIES AT SEA : THE GRAND FLEET AND THE UNITED 
STATES GOVERNMENT 

In addition to the military difficulties which the Teutons 
encountered in the spring of 1916 at Verdun and in the Tren- 
tino, there was the ever-present difficulty inherent in Allied 
mastery of the seas. Unable to foment serious rebellion within 
the British Empire or to meet the British fleet on equal terms, 
the Germans had to sit more or less idly by while Britain carried 
on her vast commerce and transported great numbers of men and 
huge quantities of munitions. 

Such weapons as Germany might employ against British mari- 
time supremacy were pitifully inadequate, and her naval exploits 
were largely of the spectacular sort. A few commerce-raiders 
still managed to elude the British blockade and to prey upon 
Allied shipping. Thus, the Moewe returned to Germany early 
in March, 1916, after capturing one French, one Belgian, and 
thirteen British merchantmen together with two hundred pris- 
oners and one million marks in gold. But so long as the British 
Grand Fleet kept the German battleships in home waters, Ger- 
man raiders were pretty certain sooner or later to fall victims 
to the Allies. 

There remained the submarine. But the submarine, while it 
had destroyed a considerable amount of Allied commerce during 
191 5 and might be depended upon to destroy a larger amount in 
1916, had already raised most embarrassing points in inter- 
national law and would be likely in the future, if pushed to 
extreme use, to alienate neutral Powers and force them to take 
common action with the Allies for mutual protection of trade. 
That this was no baseless apprehension was evidenced by the 
entry of Portugal into the Great War in March, 1916. 

Portugal had long been in intimate trade-relationship with 
Great Britain, and an old treaty of alliance bound her to give 
military aid to Britain if requested. In accordance with this 
treaty, Portugal in 1914 signified her willingness to assist her 
ally, but she was not called upon to take action until the progress 
of the German submarine-campaign had caused hardship to the 
Portuguese people and had threatened a shortage of Allied 
shipping. Then it was, in February, 191 6, that Sir Edward 
Grey, the British foreign secretary, requested the Portuguese 
Government to commandeer all German merchant vessels in 
Portuguese waters. As soon as the request was granted, Ger- 
many declared war against Portugal, March 9, and Austria- 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 163 

Hungary followed suit on March 15. The intervention of Por- 
tugal was of small military advantage to the Entente, but it 
enabled the Allies to add to their common merchant marine some 
forty Austrian and German ships seized by Portugal. 

Far more serious than the entry of Portugal into the war was 
the rising opposition of the United States to submarine warfare 
as conducted by Germany. Portugal was a small Power, and 
to declare war on her would cost Germany not very much more 
than the paper on which the declaration was written. But the 
United States was a Great Power whose enmity might be bought 
too dearly. It was worth while to think before one leaped into 
war with the United States. 

There was undoubtedly a general feeling in Germany that the 
United States was naturally quite pacific ; the Americans were 
reputed to be as adept at keeping out of European entangle- 
ments as at "chasing the almighty dollar," and the patience and 
forbearance of their government for almost a year after the sink- 
ing of the Lusitania were interpreted as signs of convinced pac- 
ifism if not of unmanly fear. At any rate, Admiral von Tirpitz, 
as director of Germany's maritime policies, was determined to 
utilize his submarines to the full, even if thereby the United 
States should be drawn into the hostile coalition. It was the one 
chance of breaking England's control of the seas, and the one 
chance must not be thrown away because of uncertainty as to 
what the United States might, or might not, do. All the jingo- 
istic elements in Germany backed von Tirpitz and insisted vehe- 
mently upon an extension of submarine warfare as the only 
effective means of retaliation against Great Britain's effort to 
"starve" Germany. 

Since by arming their merchantmen the Allies had endeavored 
to combat the growing submarine menace, the Central Powers 
announced on February 8, 1916, that beginning on March 1 
their submarines would be instructed to attack without warning 
any enemy merchantman mounting cannon. Armed merchant- 
men were to be treated virtually as belligerent warships, and 
neutral Powers were to warn their subjects not to travel on 
armed merchantmen of belligerent nationality. Among the 
neutral Powers, Sweden complied with the Austro-German 
request, but the United States, after some hesitation, returned 
a flat refusal. Nevertheless, the Central Powers persisted in 
their intention, and in March a number of merchantmen were 
torpedoed without warning. 

On March 24, 1916, the Sussex, an English Channel boat, was 



1 64 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

struck by a torpedo from a German submarine : about fifty per- 
sons lost their lives, and three American citizens were injured. 
A wave of indignation swept over the United States, which was 
soon swelled by lame attempts of the German Government to 
disclaim responsibility. The obvious anger of the American 
people and the now insistent demands of President Wilson 
tended to change the current of German opinion about the United 
States. Possibly the Americans were courageous after all; 
possibly they might join England in forceful manner; possibly, 
in this event, the situation created by unrestricted submarine 
warfare would be worse than the existing British blockade. It 
might pay to be conciliatory — at least for a time. 

To a more discreet attitude in the matter Germany was turned 
by the retirement of Admiral von Tirpitz and by the succession, 
as secretary of state for the navy, of Vice-Admiral von Capelle. 
Von Capelle and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg worked to- 
gether to quiet Tirpitz and other jingoistic Germans and to 
effect a settlement with the United States. At length, on May 
4, 19 16, the German Government promised that henceforth no 
merchantman would be sunk without warning and without due 
provision for the security of passengers' lives except when a 
merchantman attempted flight or resistance. Thereby Germany 
formally repudiated " ruthlessness " in submarine warfare and in 
so doing apparently abandoned the Tirpitz hope of bringing 
British mastery of the seas quickly to an end. 

A more gradual ending of British naval dominance was the 
hope of Bethmann-Hollweg and the purpose of his seemingly 
conciliatory policy toward America. He intimated in his note 
of May 4 that in return for his concession he would expect the 
United States to aid Germany, at least diplomatically, in light- 
ening the British blockade. But Bethmann-Hollweg was dis- 
appointed as well as Tirpitz, for on May 8 President Wilson 
declared in unequivocal words that the American Government 
"cannot for a moment entertain, much less discuss, the sugges- 
tion that respect by the German naval authorities for the right 
of citizens of the United States upon the high seas should in any 
way, or in the slightest degree, be made contingent upon the con- 
duct of any other government as affecting the rights of neutrals 
and non-combatants. The responsibility in such matters is 
single not joint, absolute not relative." It was obvious that the 
United States would be no catspaw for Germany. It was a bit 
alarming, and Germany decided for the present to hold her 
submarines in leash. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 165 

Foiled in the effective use of commerce-raiders by the British 
Grand Fleet and in the ruthless use of submarines by the United 
States Government, the German naval authorities decided, as a 
last resort, to take as heavy toll as possible of the British block- 
ading squadrons by risking their own high-seas fleet in a naval 
battle. The resulting battle, the only really important naval 
engagement of the Great War, was fought in the North Sea, off 
Jutland, on May 31, 1916. The German forces consisted of five 
battle-cruisers, three battle-squadrons (comprising seventeen 
dreadnoughts and eight pre-dreadnoughts), a number of fast 
light cruisers, and several destroyer flotillas ; the battle-cruiser 
squadron was commanded by^Vice-Admiral von Hipper,\and the 
major part of the whole fleet by Vice-Admiral von Scheer. The 
British force, which at the time was making one of its periodical 
sweeps through the North Sea, consisted of : (a) a squadron of six 
swift battle-cruisers under Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty, the 
"fifth" battle squadron of four fast battleships under Rear- 
Admiral Thomas, and several speedy light cruisers and flotillas of 
destroyers ; (b) the main fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, 
composed of twenty-five dreadnoughts and a large number of 
subsidiary craft. 

On the afternoon of May 31, Vice-Admiral Beatty with his 
command was scouting ahead of the main fleet and about fifty 
miles south of it, when suddenly the smoke of enemy ships was 
spied to the southeastward. Thinking he was in the vicinity of 
only a raiding squadron, he engaged von Hipper's fast battle- 
cruisers and was drawn on by them northeastwards until his 
squadron, now supported by that of Rear-Admiral Thomas, came 
into the range of the major portion of the German high-seas 
fleet. Being separated from the slower British forces under 
Jellicoe, the squadrons of Beatty and Thomas were severely 
punished and obliged to reverse their course, pursued by the 
whole German force. It was only when evening came, with a 
heavy mist, that the Germans were stayed by the arrival of the 
British Grand Fleet. During the night Jellicoe manceuvered 
to keep along the coast between the Germans and their base, but 
in the darkness the Germans managed to elude him, and in the 
afternoon of the following day the British squadrons left Jutland 
for their respective bases. 

The battle of Jutland took a rather heavy toll of British sea- 
men and ships. The British lost at least 113,000 tons, including 
the battle-cruisers Queen Mary (27,000 tons) , Indefatigable (18,750 
tons), and Invincible (17,250 tons). But the Germans lost pro- 



1 66 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

portionately more, and they had absolutely failed to shake 
Britain's mastery of the seas. 

Shortly after the battle of Jutland, the British armored 
cruiser Hampshire, carrying Lord Kitchener on a secret mission 
to Russia, was sunk off the coast of Scotland (June 6), and Eng- 
land's war minister and foremost soldier lost his life. 1 A month 
later the Deutschland, an unarmed German "merchant sub- 
marine," successfully eluded vigilant Allied warships and made 
a voyage across the Atlantic to the United States and back 
again. These exploits were spectacular and sensational, but 
they were devoid of larger significance. They served merely to 
emphasize the prosaic fact that Germany was being slowly 
strangled by the sea power of Great Britain. 

At the beginning of 1916 Germany optimistically had expected 
to obtain a victorious peace before autumn. By midsummer, 
however, very practical difficulties stood in Germany's way — 
the heroic French at Verdun, the gallant Italians above Vicenza, 
the dogged British off Jutland, the insistence of the President of 
neutral America — and these difficulties gave rise to a wave of 
domestic fault-finding which disturbed the serenity of German 
optimists. The Social Democratic Party split into two factions 
in the spring of 1916, one faction — the Majority, under Scheide- 
mann — still supporting the government, but the other — the 
Minority, under Haase and Ledebour — uniting their voices 
with the formerly lone voices of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa 
Luxemburg in bitter invective against the war and its German 
authors. At the other extreme, certain Conservatives and 
National Liberals, forming the Fatherland Party, devoted their 
energies to vehement denunciation of the "conciliatory" poli- 
cies and temperamental "softness" of Bethmann-Hollweg. 
Verily, it was no longer a perfectly united Germany on which 
the fortunes of Mittel-Europa would depend. Henceforth the 
German Government must conduct the war not only with atten- 
tion to strictly military strategy against the Entente but also 
with an eye to political strategy at home. 

So in 1916 Bethmann-Hollweg began seriously to talk about 
"peace." It must be a victorious peace — that was demanded 
by the Fatherland Party. It must be a peace of conciliation — 
that was demanded by many Socialists. And the patent in- 

1 Lord Kitchener was succeeded as British war minister by David Lloyd George. 
About the same time General Gallieni died ; he had already been succeeded as 
French war minister by General Roques. 



GERMANY FAILS TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 167 

sincerity of the Chancellor's peace proposals in 191 6 was not so 
much the outcome of weakness in his own character as the 
inevitable result of his efforts to reconcile irreconcilable popular 
demands. What he set out to do was to convince the Socialists 
that the Allies — and the Allies alone — were inimical to any 
peace of conciliation, and thereby to commit the Socialists to 
support the demands of the Pan-Germans. If seemingly honest 
endeavors at compromise were thwarted by the Entente, then 
Germany must fight on, cost what it might, to a victorious 
peace. On May 22, 1916, Bethmann-Hollweg declared that the 
Allies rather than the Central Powers were guilty of "militarism" 
and that they must "come down to a basis of real facts" and 
" take the war situation as every war map shows it to be." And 
early in June he announced that, if the Allies persisted in shutting 
their eyes to the war-map, "then we shall and must fight on to 
final victory." "We did what we could," the Chancellor asserted 
"to pave the way for peace, but our enemies repelled us with 
scorn ; consequently, all further talk of peace initiated by us 
becomes futile and evil." 

As a matter of fact, the Allies in the first half of 191 6 had re- 
pelled the Teutons with something more effective than scorn. 
They had repelled them with blood and iron. And in measure 
as the German hope of obtaining a military decision in 191 6 
receded, that of the Entente increased. In June, 1916, Lloyd 
George wrote that "only a crushing military victory will bring 
the peace for which the Allies are fighting," and Aristide Briand, 
the French premier, stated that peace "can come only out of 
our victory." German failure promised Allied success. The 
Allies set out in the summer of 1916 to obtain a military decision 
before the new year. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 
ATTEMPTED COORDINATION OF ALLIED PLANS 

By midsummer of 191 6, it was apparent that Germany would 
not obtain an immediate military decision. It was less appar- 
ent, but quite as real, that Germany, though still tactically 
on the offensive, was already strategically on the defensive. 
Mittel-Europa was a vast fortress, but one besieged on all sides, 
and for its safety the territory held by it mattered far less than 
its relative man-power and economic resources. 

It was generally recognized that what military superiority 
the Central Empires had demonstrated to date was due not to 
any absolute excess of man-power and economic resources, for 
in these respects the Entente Powers enjoyed remarkable supe- 
riority, but rather to greater efficiency and discretion in their 
use. What had most handicapped the Allies for two years was, 
first, a shortage of munitions, and secondly, a lack of unity in 
planning and conducting campaigns on all fronts. 

For the Allies the situation was improved by the summer 
of 1916. The lessons of the unsuccessful drives on the West- 
ern Front in 191 5 and of the Russian retreat had been taken 
to heart. In munitionment the change was amazing. France 
was now amply provided for, Russia had a supply at least four 
times greater than she had ever known, and Great Britain was 
manufacturing and issuing to the Western Front weekly as much 
as the whole pre-war stock of land-service ammunition in the 
country. Even more significant, the Allies were now seeking 
to coordinate their several military and economic efforts against 
the common foe. 

Only by a long series of discouraging defeats were the Allies 
brought face to face with the stern necessity of cooperation. 
After Russia's field armies had been routed by Hindenburg; 
after the Anglo-French offensive of September-October, 191 5, 
had proved to be merely another "nibble" at the German line; 
after Serbia had been conquered; after Gallipoli had been 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 169 

ingloriously evacuated ; after Townshend had been surrounded 
at Kut-el-Amara ; after the French lines north and east of 
Verdun had been battered back from village to village and from 
hill to hill by the German Crown Prince's terrific attacks ; only 
then did the Allies clearly perceive their greatest need. Only 
then did the Allies lose faith in the precepts of the old inter- 
national anarchy and evince a willingness to abandon, at least 
temporarily, some of their individual sovereign rights for the 
sake of creating an effective league of nations against imperial- 
istic Germany. 

On March 27-28, 1916, the first general war council of the 
Entente Powers 1 was held in Paris. France, Great Britain, 
Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Russia, Japan, Montenegro, and Por- 
tugal were represented, the first five by their premiers and foreign 
ministers, and the others by diplomatic agents ; Joffre, Castelnau, 
Kitchener, Robertson, Cadorna, and Gilinsky (aid-de-camp 
to the Tsar) attended in person to give authoritative military 
information ; while Lloyd George and Albert Thomas, ministers 
of munitions respectively for Great Britain and France, reported 
on the vital subject of army materiel. Not only was the diplo- 
matic unity of the Entente reaffirmed by the War Council, but 
military agreements were concluded among the general staffs 
of the various nations represented, and plans were laid for con- 
certed attacks, during the summer of 191 6, on the Western, the 
Eastern, the Italian, and the Balkan Fronts. As for economic 
cooperation, the War Council decided (a) to establish in Paris 
a permanent committee, representing all the Allies, to strengthen 
the blockade of the Central Powers, (b) to take common action 
through the Central Bureau of Freights in London for the reduc- 
tion of exorbitant freight rates and for a more equitable appor- 
tionment of the burdens of maritime transport, and (c) to partici- 
pate in an Economic Conference to be held shortly in Paris. 

In April an Allied inter-parliamentary conference met in Paris, 
and in June the Economic Conference convened. The latter, 
during its brief three days' session, agreed upon a far-reaching 
scheme of economic solidarity, which not only would enhance 
the effect of the Allied blockade during the war, but would also 
prolong the commercial struggle after the war by enforcing a 
partial exclusion of German manufactures from Entente coun- 
tries and by establishing within the Entente a uniform system 
of laws respecting patents, corporations, bankruptcy, etc. In 
fine, the Entente Powers were to consolidate themselves into a 
1 An Anglo-French War Council had been created in November, 1915. 



170 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

huge economic coalition, a formidable engine of trade- war even 
in time of peace. 1 

In order that the war against German trade might be pushed 
with the utmost effect, it was urgently necessary that Italy 
be induced to abandon her absurd pretense of remaining at 
peace with Germany while being at war with Austria-Hungary. 
Italy's delay in declaring war against Germany had given rise 
in some quarters to a suspicion that her Government was play- 
ing false. In February, however, the Allies had persuaded 
the Italian Government to prohibit the exportation of German 
or Austrian merchandise through Italy as well as the transit 
through Italy of commodities for Germany or Austria-Hungary, 
and to requisition the thirty-four German merchant steamers 
interned in Italian ports. After the Allied War Council and 
the Economic Conference, Italy finally, on August 28, 1916, 
declared war against the German Empire, on the ground that 
Germany was aiding Italy's enemies, Austria-Hungary and 
Turkey. 

Already economic conditions within the Central Empires 
were causing grave concern to the Teutonic authorities. Due 
to the pressure of the Allied blockade, the food situation was 
becoming alarming in Austria-Hungary and in Germany, and 
naturally it was the civilian population which in both countries 
suffered most. As early as May, 1916, what amounted to a 
food dictatorship had been established in Germany under Herr 
von Batocki, who received wide discretionary powers to regulate 
the supply, consumption, and sale of foodstuffs. 

In June and July there were frequent reports of food difficulties. 
Riots occurred in Munich and in Essen. It appeared as though 
Mittel-Europa was on the verge of starvation and perhaps of 
revolution. 

Time seemed to be ripe for the Allies to strike powerful blows 
on all fronts, in France, in Russia, on the Isonzo, in Macedo- 
nia, in Mesopotamia. The Central Empires, weakened by the 
economic blockade and by famine, would be unable to withstand 
concerted military pressure against their frontiers. Defeat 
on battlefields must surely be followed by revolution at home, 
and in that event Teutonic collapse would be inevitable and 
speedy — perhaps before the end of 1916. 

1 Shortly after the Economic Conference of June, 1916, the Entente Powers pro- 
ceeded formally to repudiate the Declaration of London as a code of international 
law for maritime warfare, and Great Britain even went so far as to draw up an 
official "blacklist" of neutral firms with German affiliations. American protests 
against this action of Great Britain were fruitless. 






ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 191 6 171 

SIMULTANEOUS ALLIED DRIVES : THE SOMME, THE ISONZO, 
AND THE SERETH 

The first of the series of great offensives planned by the Allies 
for the summer of 191 6 was the Russian drive, which began on 
June 4 and continued for about ten weeks. Though Russia 
had suffered grievously in 191 5 and had been compelled to evacu- 
ate Galicia, Bukowina, Poland, and considerable parts of Lithu- 
ania and Courland, she had utilized the respite afforded her by 
Teutonic concentrations on other fronts — in the Balkans, 
against Verdun, and in the Trentino — in order to reform her 
lines, replenish her stores of ammunition, and reorganize her 
command. In the winter of 1915-1916 she had gallantly and 
brilliantly defended Riga against German attacks by land and 
sea; in March, 1916, she had contested enemy positions north 
and south of Dvinsk and had thereby prevented the Germans 
from sending additional reinforcements to Verdun from the 
East ; and by June, she held in unexpected strength a long line 
from west of Riga past Dvinsk, Smorgon, the Pripet marshes, 
Rovno, and Tarnapol, to the northern border of Rumania. 

The Russians elected to deliver their attack on the southern 
third of the Eastern Front. In the middle sector, which extended 
north from the Pripet marshes across the Lithuanian plain to 
the lake region northeast of Vilna, the opposing line was held 
too strongly by hardened German veterans for the Russian 
commander, General Ewarts, to attempt an offensive there with 
his raw recruits. Nor was an offensive practicable along the 
northern third of the Russian front ; even if General Kuropatkin, 
commander of the Russian armies of the north, had the courage 
and genius to try conclusions with the master-strategist of Ger- 
many, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the network of lakes and 
rivers and the broad stream of the Diina would impede a Russian 
drive just as effectively as they had blocked Hindenburg's ad- 
vance toward Riga and Dvinsk. On the southern sector, how- 
ever, between the Pripet marshes and the Russo-Rumanian 
border, a Russian offensive would be both more feasible from a 
military point of view and more desirable from a political stand- 
point, since that portion of the hostile line was manned mainly 
by a miscellaneous assortment of Austro-Hungarian nationalities, 
rather than by the invincible Prussians, and since a successful 
drive against Austria-Hungary would certainly relieve pressure 
on Italy and perhaps induce Rumania to enter the war on the 
side of the Entente. 



172 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



General Brussilov, the commander of the Russian southern 
sector, was by all odds the best man who could have been selected 
for the conduct of a great offensive. Energetic, aggressive, 
indefatigable, Brussilov had splendidly led one of the Russian 
armies in the first invasion of Galicia, in 1914; in April, 1916, 
he had been selected to succeed General Ivanov in supreme 




The Russian Drive on the Styr, 1916 

command of the southern army-group. Against the scant 
700,000 men with whom the Austrian Archduke Frederick op- 
posed him, Brussilov could muster more than a million, with 
another million of half-trained recruits to draw upon for later 
reinforcements. 

Brussilov's drive began most auspiciously. Military critics 
were no less surprised than the Austro-Hungarian trenchmen 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 173 

were dismayed at the immense quantities of high explosive 
shells with which the Russian artillery accurately and thoroughly 
bombarded the Austrian defenses. Following the artillery 
preparation, Brussilov on June 4 launched simultaneous infantry 
attacks at innumerable points all along the 250-mile front from 




The Russian Drive on the Sereth, 191 6 

the Pripet to the Pruth, rudely interrupting the festivities with 
which at that very moment the Archduke Frederick's sixtieth 
birthday was being celebrated behind the Austrian lines. In 
Volhynia the Russians advancing from Rovno speedily captured 
the fortresses of Dubno and Lutsk and occupied an important 
stretch of territory west of the Styr River. At the same time 



174 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

in eastern Galicia they crossed the Sereth River and captured 
Buczacz on the Strypa. Still farther south, they forced the 
crossing of the Pruth on June 16 and on the following day entered 
Czernowitz, the capital of Bukowina. 

After the first fortnight, the Teutonic lines in Volhynia and 
Galicia began to stiffen, as German reinforcements arrived. 
At least four divisions were brought from France ; others came 
from Hindenburg's northern armies ; the Austrians, also, with 
frantic haste, recalled several divisions from Italy. Neverthe- 
less, by the end of June the greater part of Bukowina was in 
Russian hands and Russian cavalry were "approaching the 
Transylvanian passes"; and daring July Brussilov made some 
further gains west of the Dniester and west of the Styr. The 
drive expired about the middle of August simply because the 
Russians had then exhausted their supply of shells and worn 
out their howitzers and field guns. 

The results of the Russian drive were appreciable. The 
supposedly impregnable Austro-German lines along the Styr 
and the Sereth had been carried on the whole front of 250 miles 
to a depth varying from twenty to fifty miles, north of the Dnies- 
ter, and over sixty miles south of the Dniester. The entire 
province of Bukowina had been conquered. Altogether, between 
June 4 and August 12, some 350,000 men, 400 guns, and 1300 
machine-guns had been captured. Most important of all, Russia 
had demonstrated to the world that she was still in the war and 
still capable of contributing her share to the grinding of Ger- 
many between upper and nether millstones. Her sudden rise, 
phcenix-like, from the disastrous fire and flame of the preceding 
autumn reassured all the Allies and incidentally conferred on 
her Balkan neighbor, Rumania, a new faith in the cause and the 
prowess of the Entente. 

Brussilov's Drive on the Eastern Front was closely articulated 
with efforts of General Cadorna on the Italian Front. It was 
mainly the Russian offensive which enabled the Italians to check 
the Austrian invasion from the Trentino and to inaugurate a 
vindictive counter-offensive not only in the Trentino but along 
the Isonzo. 

In the face of Cadorna's assaults, the Austrians about June 
25 began a retreat on the Trentino front, evacuating in turn 
Asiago, Arsiero, and Posina. The Austrian retirement was 
planned and executed with such skill that very few prisoners 
and almost no guns were lost; nevertheless, it removed any 
immediate danger from northern Italy, and in this way amounted 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 175 

to an important Italian victory. Throughout July, Cadorna 
exerted pressure against the Trentino front, but his principal 
blow was reserved for the Isonzo. 

Heavy mortars and howitzers, transferred from the Trentino, 
opened fire along the Isonzo front on August 4, just before the 
conclusion of the Russian drive. The first day's attack, directed 




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The Italian Campaign against Gorizia 



against hills east of Monfalcone, was really a feint to draw the 
Austrian reserves toward the southern wing. The frontal 
attack delivered two days later along an eight-mile line opposite 
Gorizia was in deadly earnest. The Austrian trenches were 
pulverized by nine-hours' continuous bombardment. The Ital- 
ian infantry, believing that the hour of victory had at last arrived, 
charged with unexampled impetuosity. The heights on the 



176 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

western bank of the Isonzo, overlooking Gorizia across the 
stream, were carried the first day, as were also the heights farther 
north. South of Gorizia, on the left bank of the Isonzo, the 
Italians stormed the summit of Monte San Michele, the key 
of the Gorizia position, for which they had striven for fourteen 
months. The Austrians resisted with stubborn courage. Iso- 
lated groups held out to the bitter end, in grottoes, in dugouts, 
or on inaccessible hilltops. General Boroevic, the Croatian 
commander of the Austrian army of the Isonzo, urged his troops 
to " repulse the attack in such a way that none of the enemy shall 
escape." Nevertheless, after two days' battle, all the heights 
west of the Isonzo were carried ; and on August 9, 19 16, Italian 
infantry escorted King Victor Emmanuel into Gorizia. 

After the conquest of Gorizia, formidable obstacles had to 
be surmounted before the Italians could hope to "emancipate" 
Trieste. East of Gorizia were frowning hills, bristling with 
Austrian guns. South of Gorizia, directly barring the way to 
Trieste, lay the Carso plateau, the surface of which, naturally 
scarred by innumerable caverns and crater-like depressions, had 
been covered by the Austrians with a veritable labyrinth of 
entrenchments, blasted in the solid rock and connected by subter- 
ranean tunnels. In a region such as this, no offensive could 
make rapid progress ; and the slight Italian advance beyond 
Gorizia was achieved only by dint of the hardest kind of fight- 
ing. But at least Gorizia was won and with it a foothold on 
the Carso. The loss inflicted on the Austrians by the whole 
Italian offensive in the first two weeks of August was estimated 
at 65,000 ; the Italians announced that 18,750 prisoners, 30 guns, 
62 trench mortars, 92 machine-guns, 60,000 grenades, and other 
booty, had fallen into their hands. 

Cadorna's drive on the Isonzo and Brussilov's on the Styr 
and the Sereth were hardly expected by the Allies to be decisive. 
They were intended primarily to divert the energies and forces 
of the Central Empires from the Anglo-French line on the Somme, 
where the Allies willed to make their major effort. A month 
after the Russians inaugurated their offensive on the Eastern 
Front and a month before the Italian offensive reached its height, 
the French and British struck furiously against the Germans 
on the Western Front. 

The Anglo-French attack of July, 19 16, was delivered on 
a front of thirty miles from Gommecourt to Estrees, on both 
flanks of the Somme River. The Somme, as a glance at the 
map will show, cut the Western Front at a point about eighty 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 177 

miles north of Paris and the same distance south of the Belgian 
coast. It was significant that the theater selected for the major 
191 6 offensive was thirty-five miles south of the Loos-Vimy 
sector, which had been attacked in September, 191 5, and forty- 
five miles south of Neuve Chapelle, the scene of the first British 
drive, in March, 191 5. The southward gravitation of successive 
Anglo-French offensives proved that the Allies, temporarily 
at least, had abandoned hope of reconquering the rich coal 
and iron fields of Flanders and Artois. The new drive was 
launched, not among mines and slagheaps, but among the smiling 
agricultural villages of Picardy. 

The obvious objective for the British, who fought on the 
northern side of the Somme, was the town of Bapaume, nine 
miles northeast of the front; for the French, who held a mile 
of the front on the northern bank and four (later, ten) miles 
south of the river, Peronne, seven miles east of the French line 
and twelve miles southeast of Bapaume, was the natural goal. 
Midway between Peronne and Bapaume, the less important 
town of Combles, three miles from the front, might constitute 
a preliminary objective. Sanguine "military experts" declared 
that once the British took Bapaume they would speedily advance 
to Cambrai and Douai, two of the most important strategic 
centers behind the German lines, and that the French, by press- 
ing on beyond Peronne to St. Quentin, would make the German 
position at Noyon so dangerous a salient that it would have to 
be evacuated. 

In the technique of attack the Allies this time had many sur- 
prises in store for the Germans. Hundreds of airmen in battle- 
planes of an improved type, darting back and forth across the 
German lines just before the attack, drove the German air-scouts 
to cover, dropped "fire-balls" on the German observation-bal- 
loons, and carried back wonderfully clear photographs of the 
German trenches, so that the Anglo-French artillery could 
accurately place its high-explosive shells precisely where they 
would do the most damage. The British, on Sir Douglas Haig's 
own admission, had learned a lesson from the enemy and had 
"developed and perfected" the art of using poisonous gas and 
liquid fire. An original British contribution to the science of 
trench-warfare was the "tank, " l a heavy motor-truck encased 
in invulnerable steel armor-plate and cumbrously moved on 
caterpillar treads. With machine-guns spitting murderously 

1 The "tank" was first used in the second phase of the Somme drive, in Septem- 
ber, 1916. 

N 



178 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

from apertures on either side, a "tank" could lumber across 
"no man's land" to the enemy's trenches, unscathed by ordinary 
rifle or machine-gun fire ; it could brush aside barbed-wire en- 
tanglements as though they were cobwebs ; it could even crawl 
across trenches and shell-craters and spread confusion and panic 
behind the enemy's lines. 

Most promising of all was the improvement of British and 
French artillery. France now had a very large number of heavy 
guns, including some 16-inch mortars ; and many military critics 
regarded the French howitzers, as well as the 3-inch field gun 
(the famous " 75"), as distinctly superior to their German coun- 
terparts. British arsenals, likewise, were now turning out 
howitzers of the largest caliber, and the weekly production of 
high explosives was 11,000 times as great as the total output 
in the whole month of September, 1914. It was upon their 
tremendously powerful artillery that the Allies chiefly relied 
to blast a way through the wire entanglements, to plow up the 
intricate German entrenchments, to silence the German machine- 
guns before the infantry charge, and to cut off German counter- 
attacks by a. "curtain of fire." 

When on the night of June 30- July 1, 19 16, the artillery "prep- 
aration" of the Somme drive reached its climax, "parapets 
crumbled beneath the impact of the shells, cover hitherto thought 
bomb-proof was crushed and destroyed, and the garrisons of 
the enemy's works, sorely shattered in morale, were driven down 
into the deepest dugouts to seek shelter from the pitiless hail 
of projectiles." Early in the morning of July 1 there came a 
lull in the thunder of the howitzers, as the gunners lengthened 
the range, and the infantry leaped forward from Allied trenches, 
with cheers, to charge the German lines. 

Every inch of Allied advance was stubbornly contested by the 
Germans, and it soon became apparent that the Somme drive 
would not immediately menace Cambrai, Douai, or St. Quentin. 
In the first fortnight of the battle, July 1-14, the French took 
12,200 prisoners, pushed forward their line on a front of eleven 
miles to a maximum depth of six miles and conquered thirty 
square miles of territory. In the. same period the British ad- 
vanced on a ten-mile front to a maximum depth of three miles 
and made 10,000 prisoners. 

Badly battered, but not broken, the German line stiffened 
perceptibly after the first fortnight. The French were brought 
to an abrupt halt a mile from Peronne ; and furious German 
counter-attacks stayed the British. After a month of the great 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 179 

drive, the British found themselves in possession of twenty-four 
square miles of conquered territory, but blocked by strong Ger- 
man positions along the hilly ridge north of the Somme from 
Thiepval to Saillisel. Until this ridge could be carried, it would 
be impossible to take Bapaume. 

During the long pause, lasting through the entire month of 
August, in which the Anglo-French drive came practically to 




Battle of the Somme 

a standstill, gaining at the most a few hundred yards here and 
there, the French and British guns were being moved forward 
to new positions, to blast open the path for a new advance. 
A terrific bombardment on the night of September 2, 191 6, 
gave notice that the second phase of the battle of the Somme 
had begun. At noon on September 3 the infantry charged, 
with renewed confidence and dash. The decisive struggle for 
the town of Combles and for the ridge, between Thiepval and 
Saillisel, now ensued. 



180 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Gallant Irish troops, bearing the brunt of the battle on the 
heights northwest of Combles, expelled the enemy at the point 
of the bayonet and repelled ferocious counter-attacks. British 
"tanks" appearing for the first time, smashed their way through 
the German trenches and were followed by infantry with hand- 
grenades. The artillery thundered with "unheard-of violence." 
By September 25 the whole German line between Thiepval and 
Combles was pushed over the ridge ; only Thiepval, at the north- 
western end, and Combles, on the southeast, held out. But 
Combles was already enveloped from the south and east by the 
army of the French General Fayolle. At the very last moment, 
on September 26, the German garrison evacuated Combles, 
fighting as it went, and retired through a ravine to the north- 
east under cross-fire from both sides. On the same day, at the 
opposite end of the ridge, Thiepval was stormed and captured, 
and in the center the British line was pushed more than a mile 
north of the crest. The prisoners taken at Combles and Thiepval 
swelled the total, for the French, to 35,000; for the British, to 
26,000. 

Torrential rains and weeks of cloudy weather hindered the 
further progress of the Anglo-French drive, by making it almost 
impossible to move the heavy guns forward, over muddy roads, 
or to direct artillery fire by airplane observations. The French 
infantry, to be sure, in October fought its way into Sailly and 
Saillisel, but was repeatedly thrown back and did not completely 
occupy Saillisel until November 12. On their right wing, the 
French got close to Chaulnes ; and during the same period the 
British extended their successes at some points north of the 
Thiepval-Combles ridge to within four miles of Bapaume. 

Measured in terms of territory, the results of the Anglo- 
French drive on the Somme were small. Nowhere had the 
advance been more than seven miles. The total area conquered 
was approximately 120 square miles, only slightly greater than 
the area won by the Germans at Verdun. Neither Bapaume 
nor Peronne had been attained, and neither Cambrai nor the 
German salient at Noyon had been threatened. Nevertheless 
the drive had achieved three purposes : (1) it had relieved Verdun 
and transferred the offensive in France from the Germans to 
the Allies ; (2) by holding the bulk of the German army on the 
Western Front, it had condemned Austria-Hungary to stand 
pretty much alone and therefore unsuccessful against the Rus- 
sians on the Styr and the Sereth and against the Italians on the 
Isonzo ; and (3) it had worn down the German forces. 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 181 

By way of comment on the third point it may be noted that 
the German casualty list as added up by the British War Office 
showed a grand total of 3,920,000 (since the beginning of the 
war) on December 1, 1916, as compared with about 3,130,000 
on July 1 ; the difference, 790,000, represented the total German 
losses in killed, disabled, and captured, on all fronts during the 
five months from July to November, 1916. Allowing 90,000 
for losses in the East, the German loss in the battle of the Somme 
could not have been less than 700,000. The British loss was 
announced as approximately 450,000, and that of the French 
was estimated at 225,000. But the Allies could afford higher 
losses than the Central Empires. In the very year when Great 
Britain instituted compulsory military service and prepared 
to double her armed strength, the forces of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary, already passing their numerical maximum, were 
wasting rapidly — the Austro-Hungarians on the Russian and 
Italian fronts, the Germans at Verdun and on the Somme. 
In an endurance test such as the Great War was proving itself 
to be, relative wastage of man-power and economic resources 
was destined to become the decisive factor. 

If none of the Allied drives in 19 16 — Russian, Italian, or 
Anglo-French — had succeeded in obtaining an immediate 
military decision, all of them together had demonstrated the 
great advantage of simultaneous efforts on all fronts in wearing 
down Teutonic defense and wasting Teutonic strength. How- 
ever, they had been too exhausting to the Allies themselves to 
enable the democratic nations at that time to perceive in them 
an augury of ultimate triumph for the Allied cause. Allied 
discouragement was not immediately remedied. Allied gloom 
was not immediately dispelled. 

But the simultaneous drives did produce one immediate result. 
They brought Rumania into the war on the side of the Entente, 
and little Rumania, in the circumstances, might suffice to tip 
the balance of armed power and to bring Austria-Hungary and 
perhaps Germany to terms. 

THE PARTICIPATION AND DEFEAT OF RUMANIA 

Before the war Rumania had been associated with the Triple 
Alliance, on the basis of commercial and defensive agreements, 
but since the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 she had shown a marked 
leaning toward Serbia and the Triple Entente, and since the 
outbreak of the Great War the Entente diplomatists had strained 



182 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



every nerve to enlist Rumania's support. During the first 
two years of the struggle, however, Rumania had remained 
neutral, whether because King Ferdinand * was a Hohenzollern, 
or because Russia refused to offer Bessarabia as part of the price 
of Rumania's aid, or because the Rumanian War Office feared 
to try conclusions with the conquerors of Poland and Serbia, 
or because Rumanian landlords found it too profitable to sell 
their grain to the Central Empires. At any rate, Rumania 
wavered and hesitated. 

In April, 191 6, when Teutonic fortunes appeared most favor- 
able, the Rumanian minister at Berlin signed a convention with 
Germany, providing for free interchange of domestic products, 
and for a time the Allies feared lest Rumania should follow Bul- 
garia into the embrace of Mittcl-Europa. But subsequent mili- 
tary events changed the aspect of affairs fundamentally. By 
August, 1916, Russia had displayed unexpected signs of renewed 
strength and power by conquering Bukowina and threatening 
Transylvania — provinces ardently coveted by Rumanian irre- 
dentists ; and the Italian conquest of Gorizia on August 9, 
together with the German failure at Verdun and the Anglo- 
French victories on the Somme in July, seemed to indicate that 
the Teutonic armies were no longer able to hold their own. 

Furthermore, the situation in the Balkans was less disturbing 
to Rumania in August, 1916, than it had been in the preceding 
winter. So long as Rumania was to be assailed not only by 
determined Hungarian armies on the west but also by numerous 
Teutonic-Bulgarian-Turkish forces along her extended southern 
frontier, she prudently refrained from espousing the Allied 
cause and from thereby inviting certain disaster. But by August, 
1916, her Danubian boundary did not seem to be directly en- 
dangered. Exigencies on other fronts had led to the withdrawal 
of the greater part of Mackensen's Teutonic army from the 
Balkans. The Turks were beginning to find their freed Gallipoli 
army inadequate for the defense of Asiatic Turkey against 
Russian attacks in Armenia and British pressure in Mesopotamia 
and against uprisings of Arab chieftains. In fact, the Russians 
under the Grand Duke Nicholas on July 25 captured the impor- 
tant city of Erzingian, over a hundred miles west of Erzerum, 
and in August General Sir Stanley Maude took command of 
the British forces in Mesopotamia, reorganized and reenforced 

1 Ferdinand had succeeded his uncle, Charles I, in October, 1914, and was 
thought to be less devoted to his Hohenzollern relatives in Germany than his 
predecessor had been. 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 183 

them, and prepared to retrieve Townshend's reverses. Bagdad 
was again menaced. To add to the uneasiness and alarm of the 
Turks, the British began the construction, across the Sinai 
desert, of a railway over which an expeditionary force might 
readily be transported from Egypt for an invasion of Palestine, 
and already on June 9 the Sherif of Hedjaz, the most powerful 
Turkish vassal of western and central Arabia, had proclaimed 
from sacred Mecca his independence of the Ottoman Empire. 
Obviously Rumania now had little or nothing to fear from Tur- 
key. Turkey had need of all of her available forces for the 
defense of her own lands ; she could ill afford to spare troops 
from her hard-pressed Asiatic fronts to back Bulgaria's imperial- 
istic ambitions in Europe. 

Turkish and Teutonic military necessities seemingly left 
Bulgaria almost alone to bear the burden of Miltel-Europa in 
the Balkans. And a growing burden it was. Not only was 
the Allied expeditionary force at Salonica steadily augmented 
by British and French reinforcements, but there came also a 
detachment from Russia, contingents from Albania and Italy, 
and a force of some 120,000 Serbians who had been assembled 
and organized on the island of Corfu. Altogether by August, 
1916, General Sarrail, the Allied commander at Salonica, had 
at his disposal a formidable army-group of 700,000 men. These 
troops were flung out on a fan-shaped front in Greek Macedonia 
north of Salonica : the left flank was close to the Serbian frontier 
in the mountains south of Monastir ; the center was pushed 
up the Vardar valley to the border towns of Gievgheli and Doiran, 
forty miles north of Salonica ; and the right wing rested on the 
Struma River and Lake Tahynos, with outposts even farther 
to the northeast. On August 21, 19 16, the French War Office an- 
nounced that General Sarrail's forces " were taking the offensive 
on the entire Macedonian front." In that event, the Bulgarians 
would be obliged to devote all their efforts to the defense of their 
recent conquests in southern Serbia ; they would be in no posi- 
tion to cross the Danube and assail Rumania. Rumania hesi- 
tated no longer. 

Negotiations between Rumania and the Entente had already 
reached fruition in a secret treaty signed on August 17, 1916. 
By this treaty Rumania agreed to break off all economic rela- 
tions with Mittel-Europa and to declare war and begin offensive 
operations in ten days ; in return, France, Great Britain, Italy, 
and Russia assured Rumania of the special assistance both of 
Russian armies and of General Sarrail's army at Salonica, and 



^ 



1 84 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

promised to reward her with Bukowina, Transylvania, and the 
Banat of Temesvar. On August 27, true to its word, the Govern- 
ment of King Ferdinand declared war against Austria-Hungary. 
To the press the Government explained that, although Rumania 
had formerly been in defensive alliance with the Dual Monarchy, 
altered circumstances constrained her to resume full liberty of 
action and to join the Entente Powers in order to safeguard her 
national interests and to emancipate the three million Rumans 
resident in Austria-Hungary. Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria, 
as allies of Austria-Hungary, promptly declared war against 
Rumania. 

For the Central Powers, the participation of Rumania in the 
war on the side of their adversaries was the culminating point 
in a period of bitter disappointment. The tremendous German 
effort at Verdun (February- July, 191 6) had won a few ruined 
forts and desolated villages, but not victory; after July 1, 
when the Anglo-French drive on the Somme began, the Ger- 
mans seemed unable even to hold their own on the Western 
Front ; the Austrians, likewise, after attempting an offensive 
(May) against Italy, had been thrown back on the defensive 
and had been driven out of Gorizia (August 9) ; the Eastern 
Front, weakened to supply men for the Teutonic thrusts against 
Italy and France, had been seriously dented by the Russians 
(June-August) ; and now at the close of August the intervention 
of Rumania added 600,000 bayonets to the "ring of steel" 
surrounding the Central Powers and 900 miles to the front 
which the Central Powers had to defend. It was natural, if 
not wholly fair, that these disasters should popularly be ascribed 
to the strategy pursued during the first half of the year 1916 by 
General Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German General Staff. 

The dismissal of Falkenhayn on August 29 — two days after 
Rumania's declaration of war — betokened a desperate resolve 
on the part of the German Government to stem the tide of 
reverses. The most popular of German field commanders, 
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, hero of Tannenberg, 
conqueror of Russian Poland, and commander-in-chief of the 
German armies on the Eastern Front, was chosen to succeed 
Falkenhayn as chief of the general staff. Ludendorff, who had 
formerly been Hindenburg's chief of staff on the Russian front, 
now became quartermaster-general and was recognized as Hin- 
denburg's " right-hand man." 

The effects of Hindenburg's appointment were soon apparent. 
The command of the armies on the Western Front was reorgan- 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 185 

ized, with Field Marshal Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg as 
commander of the northern army group, Crown Prince Rup- 
precht of Bavaria as commander of the central group (including 
the region of the Somme), and the Prussian Crown Prince 
Frederick William in charge of the Verdun army group. On 
the Russian Front, Prince Leopold of Bavaria and the Austrian 
Archduke Charles Francis were the titular commanders of army 
groups, but operations were really directed by trusted German 
staff officers. In conferences held at German Headquarters 
behind the Eastern Front in September, 1916, it was decided 
to concentrate the energies of Mittel-Europa for the present upon 
a great offensive against Rumania. The crushing of Rumania 
would be not only a highly spectacular achievement but an 
object-lesson to neutral Powers such as Greece and the United 
States and a source of renewed morale to the citizens of the Cen- 
tral Empires. 

To crush Rumania, Ffindenburg collected a composite Bulgar- 
Turco-Teutonic army. Teutons were brought from the Eastern 
and Western Fronts. Hindenburg, knowing that the Russians 
had already exhausted their surplus of munitions, believed 
that his eastern lines could be securely held by somewhat dimin- 
ished numbers. Feeling, moreover, that the protracted battle 
of the Somme was gradually exhausting Anglo-French reserves 
of men and materiel, he was willing to run the risk of drawing 
off a few German defenders from that area, even if thereby he 
must forego in the near future another Teutonic offensive on 
the Western Front. The Austro-Hungarians could rely on the 
rocky heights east of Gorizia and the naturally impregnable 
Carso plateau to halt the Italian offensive ; they, too, could 
now spare men for a campaign against Rumania. Besides, 
Hindenburg prevailed upon Turkey to overlook her own needs 
in Asia and upon Bulgaria to weaken the Macedonian front. 
If the latter should be obliged to yield some ground to General 
Sarrail's Salonica army, she was assured of Teutonic aid in recov- 
ering it as soon as Rumania should be crushed. Incidentally, 
Bulgaria had not forgotten Rumania's hostility to her in the 
second Balkan War ; she had a territorial dispute of her own 
with Rumania. 

Meanwhile, the Rumanian General Staff, counting upon 
General Sarrail in Macedonia to engage the attention of Bul- 
garia and upon Russia's formal promise to inaugurate a violent 
offensive in Bukowina and thereby prevent the shifting of Austro- 
German troops from Poland and Galicia, threw the bulk of its 



i86 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



available forces into Transylvania, with little regard to the 
possibility of counter-attacks. The Ruman-speaking prin- 
cipality of Transylvania, for many years an integral part of the 




Kingdom of Hungary, lay in the acute angle between the Car- 
pathians and the Transylvanian Alps, half surrounded to the 
east and west by Rumania. In fact, Rumania bore some re- 
semblance to the open jaws of a pair of gigantic pincers — 
Moldavia forming the upper jaw, Wallachia the lower — with 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 187 

Transylvania caught in between them. It was the purpose 
of the Rumanian General Staff that Transylvania should be 
wrested from Hungary by the simultaneous pressure of both 
jaws. Accordingly, the Rumanians pressed heavily on both 
the Wallachian and the Moldavian fronts. From Moldavia 
they swiftly penetrated the chief passes leading through the 
Carpathians into eastern Transylvania, and within a fortnight 
they had reached the valley of the upper Maros and the upper 
Aluta about twenty miles inside the frontier. At the same time 
they advanced from Wallachia, passed the "Iron Gates" of the 
Danube, took Orsova, and marched northward along the rail- 
way to Mehadia. Other forces penetrated the mountain passes 
between these extreme flanks of the Rumanian front and de- 
scended into the valleys of Transylvania. 

Within three weeks of Rumania's declaration of war, one-fourth 
of Transylvania was "delivered" from Magyar rule, and some 
7000 prisoners were captured. But while the Rumanians, 
flushed with victory, were still deep in Transylvania, signs were 
at hand of an impending counter-stroke. Germany had sent 
two of her ablest strategists, Mackensen and Falkenhayn, 
to the Rumanian front, and had the Rumanian air-scouts ven- 
tured far behind the Austrian lines they would have seen, at 
Temesvar and other Hungarian railway centers, grim howitzers 
and immense stores of munitions accumulating ominously. 
Or, could the same air-scouts have perceived the deadly prep- 
arations going forward simultaneously in Bulgaria, they would 
have wondered at the temerity and rashness of Rumania's par- 
ticipation in the Great War. 

Field Marshal von Mackensen, who had cooperated with Hin- 
denburg in the great German invasion of Russia in 191 5 and 
had subsequently superintended the conquest of Serbia in Octo- 
ber and November, 19 15, unexpectedly appeared in the second 
week of September, 1916, as commander of a formidable Bulgar- 
Teutonic army ready to pounce upon the exposed and poorly 
defended southern border of Rumania, while General von Falken- 
hayn took command of a powerful Austro-German army in 
Transylvania. The German General Staff had evolved a mas- 
terful plan of strategy. Falkenhayn would press the main 
Rumanian armies so hard that no considerable portion of them 
could be dispatched from Transylvania to the Dobrudja ; and 
Mackensen, encountering little armed opposition, would invade 
the Dobrudja and cut off the retreat of the Rumanians from 
Transylvania. In this fashion, Rumania would be ground to 



1 88 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

bits between the jaws of Falkenhayn and Mackensen; her 
army would be destroyed and her complete conquest assured. 

Mackensen's army advanced in the Dobrudja so quickly 
that in a few days it was fifty miles north of the Bulgarian fron- 
tier and within ten miles of the very important Constanza- 
Chernavoda railway which connects Bucharest with Constanza, 
the chief Rumanian port on the Black Sea. While Russian 
troops were being rushed to the assistance of the hard-pressed 
Rumanians in the Dobrudja, General von Falkenhayn dealt 
the Rumanian invaders of Transylvania a series of hard blows. 
The cities of Hermannstadt, Schassburg, and Kronstadt were 
in turn relieved, and the Rumanian columns in eastern Transyl- 
vania were soon in headlong flight toward the Rumanian frontier. 
By the middle of October the Rumanians had been driven back 
all along the line ; Transylvania had been cleared, and the Austro- 
German armies were gaining footholds on Rumanian soil. 

By this time Mackensen had brought up a sufficient number 
of big guns to break through the Russo-Rumanian lines south 
of the Chernavoda-Constanza railway ; Constanza fell on Octo- 
ber 22 — just eight weeks after Rumania's entry into the war. 
In vain Russia sent one of her ablest generals, Vladimir Sakharov, 
with reinforcements to stiffen the Dobrudja line ; the Constanza- 
Chernavoda railway was irretrievably lost, and the best Sakharov 
could do was to reorganize the shattered Russo-Rumanian army 
in northern Dobrudja. 

No aid was forthcoming to the Rumanians in the west. There 
Falkenhayn captured Vulcan Pass on October 25, defeated the 
Rumanians in a bloody battle, and on November 21 captured 
Craiova, seventy-five miles south of the frontier. By this bold 
stroke Falkenhayn won the western third of Wallachia. The 
Rumanian force operating in the extreme west, finding itself 
completely cut off from the other Rumanian armies, hastily 
evacuated Orsova and Turnu-Severin and retired into near-by 
mountains, but was soon compelled to surrender. 

With frantic haste General Averescu, the Rumanian com- 
mander-in-chief, endeavored to marshal his demoralized army 
behind the Aluta River, ninety miles west of Bucharest. But 
the line of the Aluta was turned on both flanks. From the 
north, Austro- German troops advanced down the slopes of the 
Transylvanian Alps into the Wallachian plain, behind the Aluta. 
On the south, Mackensen flung strong forces across the Danube 
and by November 27 reached Alexandria. With both flanks 
crumpling, the Aluta line was no longer tenable, and General 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 189 

Averescu fell back to his last line of defense, the Arges River, 
less than ten miles west of Bucharest. Again Mackensen and 
Falkenhayn resorted to their flanking tactics, from the south 
and from the north respectively ; and the Arges line too had to 
be abandoned. 

With its supposedly invulnerable cincture of nineteen armored 
forts and redoubts, constructed by the famous Belgian engineer, 
Brialmont, Bucharest was one of the most formidable fortresses 
in Europe, but the Rumanians made no serious attempt to defend 
their capital against Mackensen's heavy howitzers. On Decem- 
ber 6, — his birthday, — Mackensen entered Bucharest in 
triumph. On the same day the city of Ploechti, thirty miles 
north of Bucharest, and the whole line of the Bucharest-Kron- 
stadt railway fell into the invader's hand. In three weeks' 
campaign, November 15-December 6, Falkenhayn and Macken- 
sen had routed the Rumanian army, taken over 80,000 prisoners, 
and conquered, the greater part of Wallachia, including the 
capital city of Bucharest. 

Violent Russian counter-attacks in the Carpathians failed 
to stay the enemy. By the middle of January, 191 7, the Ru- 
manians had lost all Wallachia, all the Dobrudja, and a portion 
of southern Moldavia ; their king was at Jassy and their armed 
remnants, supported by Russians, were standing at bay along 
the Sereth River from Galatz westwards. 

The collapse of Rumania was due in large part to the failure 
of General Sarrail to exert sufficient pressure on the Macedonian 
front. General Sarrail, it will be recalled, had announced on 
August 20 that he was taking the offensive, with his 700,000 
Allied troops, against the Bulgarians. But this "offensive" 
was either a sham or a fiasco. Instead of driving northward 
into Serbia and Bulgaria, Sarrail actually lost ground. His 
left wing was beaten back from Fiorina, and the Bulgarians in 
this sector occupied Koritza and Kastoria. At the same time, 
on Sarrail's right wing, Bulgarian troops seized the railway 
between Drama, Seres, and Demir-Hissar, and on September 
12 occupied the Greek port of Kavala. 

The months of October, November, and December, — so 
disastrous for Rumania, — witnessed no significant operations 
either on the right wing or in the center of Sarrail's line ; only 
on the left wing was anything achieved. Here the reorganized 
Serbian army of 1 20,000 men unrelentingly fought its way, mile 
by mile, northward toward Monastir. After two months' 
plodding and pushing over bleak hills and across dreary ravines 



i 9 o A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the Serbians at length on November 19, 1916, reentered Monastir. 
It was exactly four years since Monastir had been captured from 
Turkey by the Serbs, and almost one year since it had been 
occupied by the Bulgarians. 

Despite this Serbian achievement, the fact remained that 
the Bulgarians not only had been able to transfer troops and 
guns from Macedonia to Dobrudja in order to assist in the Austro- 
German conquest of Rumania, but also had prevented the Allied 
force at Salonica from inflicting any grave injury on their weak- 
ened Macedonian front; if they had lost Monastir, they had 
gained Kavala. Of General Sarrail's seeming inactivity in this 
crisis there were two explanations. In the first place, his army 
was heterogeneous, and as yet badly disciplined and poorly 
equipped and munitioned. In the second place, he did not 
dare move his forces far forward so long as a hostile Greek army 
might assail him from the rear. 

It was the Greek King Constantine again who paralyzed 
Allied plans to relieve a Balkan state hard-pressed by Teutonic- 
Bulgarian invaders. When Rumania entered the war in August, 
1916, confident of an easy triumph, Constantine exultingly 
predicted that she would speedily be conquered by German 
arms. The event confirmed the Greek king's prophecy and 
strengthened at once his devotion to Germany and his contempt 
for the Allies. Even the seizure of the Greek port of Kavala by 
the Bulgarians in September — the very port whose peaceful 
cession to Bulgaria had been advocated by Venizelos and vehe- 
mently resisted by the king only the year before — was now 
viewed most complacently by Constantine. It appeared as 
if Constantine had some sort of formal agreement with the Cen- 
tral Empires and only awaited a favorable opportunity to assail 
the Allies as suddenly and as theatrically as King Ferdinand 
of Bulgaria had done. 

Until Rumania entered the war, the Allies had labored chiefly 
by diplomacy to enlist the support, or at least the benevolent 
neutrality, of King Constantine and his succession of puppet 
premiers. Thereafter they resorted to coercion. In September 
Greece was compelled to surrender her telegraphs and postal 
system to Anglo-French authorities. In October the French 
Admiral du Fournet seized the Greek navy ; all German, Austro- 
Hungarian, Turkish, and Bulgarian diplomatic representatives 
were unceremoniously expelled from Greece ; Athenian news- 
papers were subjected to French censorship ; Anglo-French 
marines were landed at Piraeus and on Greek islands in the 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 191 

JEgestn ; an Anglo-French fleet trained its guns on Athens ; the 
coast of Greece was blockaded ; and in December Constantine 
was forced not only to transfer his troops to the southernmost 
districts of Greece but also to turn over to the Allies a consid- 
erable part of the munitions and artillery of the Greek army. 

These measures, necessary as they were from the Allied point 
of view, served to render King Constantine still more truculent 
and to divide the Greek people into two hostile camps. On the 
one hand, Venizelos applauded the drastic measures of the 
Allies and formally repudiated the king; he established a pro- 
visional government in Crete and Macedonia and on his own 
account issued a declaration of war against Bulgaria (November 
28, 1916). On the other hand, the Greek army chiefs, with a 
sizable popular following, espoused the cause of the king and 
denounced the "treason" of Venizelos and the "hypocrisy 1 ' 
of the Allies ; they were intent on aiding the Germans and em- 
barrassing General Sarrail at Salonica. Early in December 
there were riotous demonstrations in Athens against the Allies, 
and hundreds of Venizelists were clubbed or imprisoned. Only 
the landing of Anglo-French marines restored order. 

Because of the disquieting situation in Greece and because of 
the disorganized condition of Sarrail's motley forces in Mace- 
donia, no Anglo-French aid was forthcoming to Rumania. Rus- 
sia, it is true, sent troops into Moldavia and the Dobrudja, but 
they were too few in number and too ill munitioned to stay the 
oncoming rush of Teutonic-Bulgarian invaders. Besides, it 
was subsequently disclosed that the Tsar's government at the 
time of Rumania's direst need was playing a double game. 
Russia, for the sake of retaining Bessarabia and making Rumania 
an object of her own imperialistic ambition, did not desire her 
southern neighbor to acquire too great prestige by a decisive 
victory over Austria-Hungary, and therefore neglected to assist 
her until too late. Struck in the face by Germany and in the 
side by Bulgaria, and stabbed in the back by Russia, Rumania 
collapsed barely three months after her participation in the 
Great War. 

STALEMATE AND THE TEUTONIC PEACE DRIVE 

The Allies, hopeful in midsummer of 19 16 that their fortunes 
were at last in the ascendant, had counted upon Rumania's 
intervention as the last straw which would break the back of 
Germanized Mittel-Europa. At the close of 1916, however, it 



IQ2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

was obvious that the net result of Rumania's participation in 
the Great War had been favorable to the Central Empires. 
German prestige and Austro-Hungarian confidence, shaken 
by the failures at Verdun, on the Somme, in Volhynia, in Galicia, 
in Bukowina, and on the Isonzo, were restored by the spectacular 
campaign in Rumania. To be sure, the battle-front was now 
approximately two hundred miles longer than before Rumania's 
intervention, but actually fewer men would be required to oppose, 
or to pursue, the shattered fragments of the Rumanian field 
army, which had lost at least two-thirds of its effectives, than 
had previously been required to guard nine hundred miles of 
frontier with Rumania's long-delayed intervention a standing 
menace. Moreover, a large quantity of Rumanian wheat, 
which British agents had purchased to prevent its exportation 
to the Central Powers, was now in possession of the Teutons; 
and the fertile grain-fields of Wallachia, scientifically cultivated 
under the supervision of German agricultural experts, might 
relieve the shortage of foodstuffs in Austria-Hungary and Ger- 
many, in case the war should be prolonged over another harvest 
season. Nor should it be forgotten that in capturing the Ru- 
manian city of Ploechti, in the Prahova valley, the Germans 
won the center of Europe's richest oil-fields, although the oil- 
wells were found in flames and the oil-tanks destroyed. The 
economic results of the campaign of Mackensen and Falkenhayn 
were as important as its strategy was brilliant. 

The only Allied success in the autumn of 1916, which in any 
way could offset the Teutonic conquest of Rumania, was a French 
counter-stroke at Verdun. In late October and early November, 
General Nivelle launched a furious attack on the east bank of 
the Meuse, 1 north of Verdun, broke through the German line 
on a four-mile front to a depth of two miles, and recovered Forts 
Douaumont and Vaux and the village of Damloup. In mid- 
December, a second French assault carried German trenches 
on a front of six miles and took several other villages, with 11,000 
prisoners. Although the territory regained by these two French 
counter-strokes represented only a small part of what had been 
lost in the vicinity of Verdun between February and July, never- 
theless the significance of the French exploit was very real. 
With trifling sacrifice of men, the French had easily regained 
the most important strategic positions on the east bank of the 
Meuse — positions which the Prussian Crown Prince had cap- 

1 The French operations, under the general command of Nivelle, were actually 
conducted by General Mangin. 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 193 

tured only after desperate, protracted, and frightfully sanguinary 
battles. The moral of which was that while the Germans might 
still win sensational victories on other fronts — for example, 
over little Rumania — the Allies were gradually gaining military 
superiority on the substantial and all-important Western Front. 

Nevertheless, for the moment, Mackensen's spectacular 
exploits in Rumania loomed larger in popular imagination than 
Nivelle's counter-attack at Verdun. If the Germans had failed 
to obtain a final military decision in 1916, it was equally true 
that the Allies had failed too. And the result was bitter disap- 
pointment and depression within each of the Entente Powers. 

In Great Britain, Lord Northcliffe, the proprietor of the 
London Times and of several other influential newspapers, 
assailed Mr. Asquith's Government and sowed serious dissension 
between the premier and David Lloyd George. Early in Decem- 
ber, 1916, Lord Northcliffe's journalistic campaign received 
sufficient approbation throughout the country and in parlia- 
ment to lead to the resignation of the Asquith cabinet. After 
the refusal of Andrew Bonar Law, the Unionist leader, to become 
prime minister, David Lloyd George was invited to form a minis- 
try and his acceptance was announced on December 6. The 
Lloyd George cabinet, like the most recent Asquith cabinet, was 
a coalition affair, representing the Liberal, Unionist, and Labor 
parties, but with the exception of the premiership itself the 
most important posts in the new ministry were assigned to Union- 
ists rather than to Liberals; Arthur J. Balfour succeeded Sir 
Edward Grey * as foreign secretary ; Bonar Law became chan- 
cellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons ; 
and the "war cabinet," a steering committee of five members 
newly created from within the ministry, comprised the premier, 
Bonar Law, Lord Milner, Earl Curzon, and Arthur Henderson, 
— one Liberal, three Unionists, and one Laborite. 

In France, Premier Briand managed to retain office and the 
confidence of a majority of his countrymen by constituting, 
like Lloyd George, a special centralizing "war committee" 
within his cabinet. The French war committee, as announced 
on December 12, comprised, in addition to the premier, Alex- 
andre Ribot, General Lyautey, 2 Admiral Lacaze, and Albert 
Thomas, ministers respectively of finance, war, marine, and 
munitions. Shortly afterwards, General Joffre was made a 

1 Viscount Grey of Falloden. 

2 General Hubert Lyautey, who had made a name for himself in Morocco, was 
just succeeding General Roques as minister of war. 

o 



i 9 4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Marshal of France and retired from active command of the French 
forces, his successor being General Robert Nivelle, the leader 
of the recently successful counter-attack at Verdun. 

In Russia, affairs were going from bad to worse. At the 
very time when the army was recovering from its defeats and 
demoralization of 191 5 and becoming once more a potential 
weapon of offense against the Teutons, the Tsar and his entourage 
were willfully blinding their eyes to the signs of economic dis- 
tress throughout the empire and persistently closing their 
ears to popular demands for political reform. Boris Sturmer, 
who served as premier during the greater part of the critical 
year 1916, was a confirmed reactionary and was suspected of 
pro-German leanings. He muzzled the press, forced the able 
and loyally pro-Entente Sazonov out of the ministry of foreign 
affairs (August, 1916), appointed ultra-conservatives to office, 
suspended the Duma from July to November, executed obnoxious 
autocratic decrees, and endeavored to repress altogether popular 
organizations, such as the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos, the 
Union of Municipalities, and the War Industries Committee, 
formed for the twofold purpose of advocating democratic reform 
and supporting the government in the vigorous prosecution of 
the war. In October, Sturmer placed all meetings of these popu- 
lar organizations under police supervision ; and, to cap the 
climax, he appointed as minister of the interior M. Protopopov, 
who was the most zealous prosecutor of liberals in all Russia and 
who was known to cherish German sympathies. 

These and other causes of complaint united nearly all Russian 
factions against the government. But when at length, in Novem- 
ber, 1916, Sturmer resigned, the Tsar apparently had still 
learned no lesson, for he promptly raised to the premiership 
Alexander Trepov, a reactionary of the same faith and outlook 
as Sturmer and Protopopov. The year 191 6 closed in Russia 
with a stormy session of the Duma in which Professor Paul 
Milyukov, leader of the Constitutional Democrats, indicted 
the government and was followed by several speakers who re- 
ported sensational instances of criminal negligence in the prose- 
cution of the war. The Duma passed a resolution affirming 
that certain "dark forces" were tending to paralyze the nation's 
energies and to cause disorganization in all departments. Russia 
was rapidly becoming volcanic, but the weak Tsar, the "little 
father," was hopelessly deaf and blind. 

As for the Central Empires, the common people were tempo- 
rarily reassured by the surprisingly speedy conquest of Rumania 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 195 

and were therefore less critical of their civil and military authori- 
ties. In Austria-Hungary, the death of the aged Emperor- 
King Francis Joseph on November 21, 1916, which should have 
been, according to Allied forecasts, the signal for the dissolution 
of the Dual Monarchy, was succeeded quietly, and apparently 
with cordial popular acquiescence, by the coronation of the 
Archduke Charles, Francis Joseph's grand-nephew, as emperor 
of Austria and king of Hungary. In Germany, a ''Patriotic 
Auxiliary Service Act," passed by the Reichstag on December 
2, subjected all males between sixteen and sixty years of age 
not yet called to the colors to auxiliary war work, such as service 
in war industries, agriculture, and nursing the sick ; it was a 
kind of levee en masse and represented the closest sort of coopera- 
tion between the German government and the German people 
in a supreme endeavor to win the war. 

Meanwhile-, the Teutons were doing everything in their power 
to strengthen and consolidate Mittel-Europa. Laborers were 
being deported in large numbers from Belgium and from the 
conquered districts of France and Rumania for work in Ger- 
man factories and fields. Encouragement was being given to 
the "national aspirations" of the Belgian Flemings and more 
especially of the Russian Poles. 

In glaring contrast to the failure of Russia to establish and 
maintain autonomy in Poland, the Teutons after driving the 
Russians out of the country set about elaborating measures 
of self-government for the Poles. On November 5, 19 16, the 
German and Austrian emperors conjointly published a proclama- 
tion promising to create an "independent" Kingdom of Poland, 
"a national state with an hereditary monarch and a constitu- 
tional government," in "intimate relations" with Austria-Hun- 
gary and Germany. This proclamation was read publicly at 
Lublin and at Warsaw, in the Polish language, and was followed 
by the hoisting of Polish flags while Teutonic military bands 
played the Polish national anthem. A Regency was set up, 
and elections were instituted for the State Council, or upper 
house, of the future Polish Parliament. The Polish Jews, 
moreover, were conciliated by the grant of special religious and 
social privileges. 

It soon became apparent that the "independent kingdom of 
Poland in intimate relations with Austria-Hungary and Ger- 
many" was not intended to be a national state for all Polish 
people ; the Polish provinces of Prussia were to remain Prussian 
as before, and Polish Galicia, while securing a larger measure 



196 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of autonomy within the Dual Monarchy, was not to be united 
with independent Poland. Austro- German magnanimity was 
to be displayed only in Russian Poland, and even there it was 
most properly suspected when proclamations were issued by 
the German Governor-General von Beseler at Warsaw exhorting 
the Poles to volunteer for service in the Polish army which ''would 
join in the struggle against Russia. " 

Russia then did grudgingly in defeat what she might have done 
with better grace during the preceding year. She issued a coun- 
ter-proclamation, denouncing the Austro-German manifesto 
as illegal and insincere, threatening to treat as traitors rather 
than as prisoners of war any Russian Poles captured from the 
new Polish army, and promising to create a unified and autono- 
mous Poland on an ethnographical basis (which would mean the 
inclusion of Prussian Poland and Austrian Galicia as well as 
Russian Poland), under the sovereignty of the Tsar, after the 
war. The French and British premiers congratulated Russia 
upon her "generous initiative" and associated themselves with 
Russia's plans. 

The Poles had no cause to be pro-German ; they were, in fact, 
almost to a man anti-German. But many of them were also, 
quite naturally, anti-Russian, and these Poles perceived in Rus- 
sia's promises as much hypocrisy as in the Teutons'. On the 
assumption that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," 
they were willing to accept the German pronouncement at face- 
value and to help the Teutons put Russia out of the way. Their 
day of reckoning with the Germans would come later. Such was 
the reasoning of the leaders of an important political party among 
the Poles, — - the Committee of National Defense (popularly 
called, from the initials of its Polish name, the K. O. N.), — whose 
most conspicuous representative, General Pilsudski, a truly 
national hero, at once raised a Polish army and put it at the 
disposal of the Austrians. Pilsudski's course was all the more 
popular with his compatriots since a proposal of the United States, 
in the spring of 1916, to organize relief for the battle-scarred and 
famished country of Russian Poland had been brought to naught, 
so Germany made it appear, by the malice and meanness of 
Russia and her allies. 1 

1 The United States, on February 21, 1916, asked Great Britain for permission 
to send some 40,000 tons of foodstuffs to be distributed by an American Commis- 
sion among the civilian inhabitants of certain districts of Russian Poland and Lithu- 
ania, on condition that the remainder be cared for by Germany and that imported 
foodstuffs be used solely for the need of civilians. Russia would agree to the pro- 
posal only on the further condition that the Central Empires provide relief for 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 197 

Yet despite the seeming attachment of Poland to Mittel-Europa 
and the sensational conquest of Rumania, the military authori- 
ties of Germany must have recognized in the winter of 191 6- 
191 7 that they were still far from winning the war. Tem- 
porarily Allied offensives had come to a standstill — the Anglo- 
French on the Somme and at Verdun, the Italian at Gorizia 
and on the Carso, the Russian in Volhynia and Bukowina, — 
but it was only a question of time when they would be renewed 
and when, with waxing man-power and increased unity and 
efficiency, they would be pressed more decisively against Ger- 
many already utilizing her resources to the full. No longer, 
apparently, could the Central Empires conduct a sustained and 
overpowering drive against any one of their great enemies, such 
as they had conducted in France in 1914 or in Russia in 191 5. 
Perhaps, after all, the winning of the Great War would require 
astute appeals from civilians as well as sledge-hammer blows 
from the military. A drive for peace, at the psychological 
moment, might bring its victory no less renowned than the war- 
drive of a Hindenburg or a Mackensen. To forward the new 
policy, Gottlieb von Jagow, who had been foreign secretary of 
Germany since 191 2, was succeeded in December, 1916, by 
Alfred Zimmermann. 

It was the "psychological moment" for a Teutonic peace 
drive. The collapse of Rumania meant little to the strictly 
military fortunes of the rival armed coalitions, but it signified 
much to civilian morale among the belligerents. A curiously 
unjustified optimism possessed the Teutons, while an oddly 
unwarranted pessimism seized the Allied nations. It was re- 
markable, on the one hand, how loyally the subjects of the Dual 
Monarchy acclaimed their new Emperor-King Charles and how 
universally the Germans supported the levee en masse, and, on 
the other hand, how bitterly the influential Northcliffe journals 
assailed Asquith's British government, how irritably the So- 
cialists and Radicals in France grumbled at the governmental 
authorities, and how profoundly Russia was stirred by unrest 
and rumblings of revolution. Undoubtedly there was a growing 
war-weariness everywhere. "We behold," said Pope Benedict 
XV in an allocution to his cardinals on December 4, 191 6, "in 
one place the vile treatment inflicted on sacred things and on 

Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania ; and Great Britain indorsed the Russian demand 
on May 10. Ten days later Germany rejected the Russo-British stipulations. 
To subsequent humanitarian appeals of the United States, Germany constantly 
affirmed that "owing to the cruel British blockade policy" nothing could be 
done. 



198 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

ministers of religion, even of high dignity, although both should 
be inviolable by divine law and the law of nations ; in another, 
numerous peaceful citizens taken away from their homes amid 
tears of mothers, wives, and children; in another, open cities 
and undefended populations made victims especially of aerial 
raids ; everywhere on land and on sea such misdeeds perpetrated 
as fill the soul with horror and anguish." 

On December 12, 1916, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bul- 
garia, and Turkey simultaneously submitted almost identical 
notes to the diplomatic representatives of Spain, Switzerland, 
and the United States, as well as to other neutral Powers and to 
the Vatican, proposing "to enter forthwith into peace negotia- 
tions." No concrete terms were offered by the Central Powers, 
but the Allies were invited to discuss "an appropriate basis for 
the establishment of a lasting peace," and apparently the inten- 
tion was to hold pourparlers at The Hague during the winter, 
while hostilities continued. The notes were forwarded to the 
Entente Powers without comment by the neutral intermediaries. 

Immediately the Russian foreign minister, with the emphatic 
approval of the Duma, denounced the Teutonic peace offer and 
declared Russia's unwillingness to enter into any peace negotia- 
tions whatsoever. The Tsar, in a proclamation to his armies, 
stated that "the time has not yet arrived. The enemy has not 
yet been driven out of the provinces he has occupied. Russia's 
attainment of the tasks created by the war — regarding Con- 
stantinople and the Dardanelles, and the establishment of a free 
Poland embracing all three of her racial districts — has not yet 
been guaranteed." Foreign Minister Sonnino of Italy and 
Premier Briand of France likewise disclaimed any intention of 
concluding a premature peace. In behalf of Great Britain, 
Lloyd George declared that while the Allies would wait to hear 
what terms Germany had to offer, little could be expected of 
peace negotiations at the moment ; " the very appeal for peace," 
he said, "was delivered ostentatiously from the triumphal 
chariot of Prussian militarism." It would be a "cruel folly" 
not to stop Germany from " swashbuckling through the streets 
of Europe." 

On December 30, a formal answer to the peace-note of Mittel- 
Europa was returned signed by Russia, France, Great Britain, 
Japan, Italy, Belgium, Montenegro, Portugal, and Rumania. 
It declared that "no peace is possible so long as the Allies have 
not secured reparation for violated rights and liberties, recogni- 
tion of the principle of nationality and of the free existence of 



ALLIES FAIL TO OBTAIN A DECISION IN 1916 199 

small states ; so long as they have not brought about a settle- 
ment calculated to end, once and for all, causes which have 
constituted a perpetual menace to the nations, and to afford 
the only effective guarantees for the future security of the 
world." 

Beyond these references to " reparation" and "guarantees," 
the Allied governments did not indicate the terms on which 
they would consent to make peace. Evidently they were con- 
vinced of their own ultimate power to dictate peace, or they 
were determined to elicit a clear statement of the war aims of 
the Central Powers. They certainly knew, with the war map 
as it was and with the people of the Central Powers confident 
of success, that the responsible authorities of Mittel-Europa 
would hardly hazard a frank, public confession of war aims. 
For if, contrary to expectations, these authorities should suggest 
terms of peace conciliatory enough to merit serious discussion 
by the Allies, the German people would be most painfully dis- 
illusioned as to the invincible prowess of Teutonic arms, and 
their morale would be destroyed ; and if, more naturally, these 
same authorities should announce specific terms in keeping 
with the spirit of braggadocio with which the populace of Cen- 
tral Europe had been inspired, the Allied nations would then 
understand perfectly what the Allied governments had repeatedly 
declared — that peace with militarized victorious Germany 
would mean a Germanized Europe and a Germanized world. 
In the latter case, Allied morale would be enormously strength- 
ened, and the Allied nations would put forth military efforts 
such as they had never put forth before. 

The governments of Mittel-Europa escaped the dilemma by 
maintaining a terrible silence as to the precise terms of peace 
which they would offer. They pretended to be sad and grieved 
that the wicked Allies would not discuss "peace" with them, 
and they actually duped the bulk of their subjects into believ- 
ing that it was the Allies alone who persisted in war and blood- 
shed. This effect, at least, the Teutonic peace drive of Decem- 
ber, 19 1 6, had, that it temporarily consolidated public opinion 
in Mittel-Europa in support of any measures, no matter how 
drastic or ruthless, which the military authorities might take. 

For the time being, too, the Teutonic peace drive served to 
reawaken pacifist agitation in Entente countries. In radical 
circles the Allied governments were criticized for not making 
clear their own war aims ; and from this criticism sprang up the 
curious movement known as defeatism, a movement which 



200 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

reached its greatest growth in 19 17 and which will require our 
attention in a subsequent chapter. 1 

The Teutonic peace drive had succeeded in 191 6 scarcely 
better than the year's military exploits. Neither Germany 
nor the Allies had obtained a decision in the Great War. In 
negotiations for peace as well as in military campaigns the year 
1916 closed with an apparent stalemate between the gamesters 
of the hostile coalitions. 

In certain respects the failure of the peace drive in December, 
1916, marked the end of a period of the Great War. For two 
years and a half, Germany had tried by force of arms to master 
the Continent of Europe — in vain. For two years and a half, 
France, Russia, and Great Britain had attempted to smash 
German imperialism — in vain. Now, however, Russia was on 
the brink of revolution, and the United States was on the point 
of intervention. There would be something of a new alignment 
and of a new emphasis, and the Great War would enter upon a 
new period. 

1 See below, pp. 287-298. 



CHAPTER X 

THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 
THE STAKES: ISOLATION OR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS? 

By January, 191 7, the Great War had been in progress two 
years and a half. In this respect it was in marked contrast to the 
international conflicts of the preceding century. The war of 1859 
between France and Austria had lasted less than three months; 
the war of 1866 between Prussia and Austria, only seven weeks; 
the war of 1870-187 1 between France and Germany, scarcely 
seven months; the Balkans Wars together, only a few months; 
and the Russo-Japanese War, less than eighteen months. In 
each of these conflicts, one side or the other had obtained almost 
at the outset a distinct military advantage which had been pressed 
to a speedy, favorable decision. In the Great War, on the other 
hand, Germany with all her preparedness and her efficiency had 
failed to obtain a military decision, and the Allies likewise, de- 
spite their superior man power and economic resources, had failed 
to win a decisive victory. The Great War was protracted and 
indecisive ; it was becoming obviously an endurance test. 

The Great War had been occasioned by pretty strictly Euro- 
pean disputes — disputes between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, 
and the long-standing feud between France and Germany over 
Alsace-Lorraine. It had been undertaken by Germany in the 
spirit of international anarchy — in the spirit which would sacri- 
fice the small to the great, the weak to the strong, right to might. 
It represented an attempt on the part of a single Great Power — 
Germany — to impose its will and its Kultur by force upon the 
European state-system and upon European peoples. If Ger- 
many should win the war, it would mean a Germanized Europe 
and perhaps a Germanized world ; nay more, it would mean the 
signal exaltation of one. state and one nation and thereby the 
submergence of the idea that the world's progress depends upon 
friendly and respectful cooperation between independent and 
sovereign communities. A German triumph would menace the 
whole world. 



202 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

That the world menace of German victory was not clearly- 
perceived in neutral countries in 191 6 should occasion no surprise. 
The Great War, as yet, was viewed essentially as a European 
war. And to many neutrals it was doubtful whether Allied vic- 
tory would not, almost equally with German victory, furnish a 
grave menace to world peace and world security. Englishmen 
and Frenchmen and Italians were suspected of imperialistic am- 
bitions, and in this particular the Tsar's government was more 
than suspect. So long as autocratic Russia and oligarchical 
Japan were influential allies of democratic France, Italy, and 
Britain, it was difficult to interpret the struggle as one for liberty 
and democracy or as one for setting limits to imperialism. 

Nor was there as yet any well-defined alternative to the inter- 
national anarchy which Germany championed and which, if she 
were victorious, she would fasten more or less permanently upon 
the world. Each of the Allies had entered the war primarily to 
serve its own ends, and for long the chief weakness of the Allies 
had lain in their inability to cooperate effectually with one an- 
other and in their unwillingness to subordinate any individual 
interests to the good of their common cause. Beyond defeating 
Germany they appeared to have no common cause. And if they 
were unwilling or unable, in the stress of the Great War, to depart 
from theories and practices of international anarchy and adopt 
some sort of enduring covenant among themselves, what guar- 
antee would there be against an endless succession of Great Wars ? 
Perhaps on the morrow of German defeat, Russia would arise and, 
with a band of confederates, essay to re-play the role of Germany. 
Or it might be Japan, or some other proud sovereign state. In 
this fashion even Allied triumph might be but a prelude to still 
vaster wars in which European civilization would be utterly anni- 
hilated. History taught only too well that mere alliances were 
quite kaleidoscopic, and that a "balance of power" was perpet- 
ually getting out of equilibrium. 

Germany stood for international anarchy, for isolation from 
the needs and interests of other states and other peoples ; she 
relied upon her sword to gain what she desired of this world's 
glory and this world's goods. For what did the Allies stand? 
Simply to break the German sword, meanwhile sharpening the 
sword of a Russia or a Japan ? It was a question asked in that 
reflective winter of 1916-1917 in France and Great Britain as well 
as in neutral countries. And out of the searching of Allied con- 
science emerged a new conviction — a new purpose — that the 
Great War must be ended by the crushing not alone of Germany 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 203 

but of that spirit of international anarchy which Germany in- 
carnated. Isolation and self-sufficiency of sovereign states had 
had their day ; tried in the balance, they had been found wanting. 
As the Great War progressed, its stakes were becoming clearer. 
On the one hand were isolation, international anarchy, and dom- 
ination of the world by a militaristic and autocratic Great Power ; 
on the other hand were cooperation, a league of free nations, and a 
partnership among democratic and peace-loving governments in 
assuming the responsibilities as well as the profits of world man- 
agement. The two most fateful factors in clarifying the stakes 
of the Great War early in 191 7 were the Russian revolution and 
the intervention of the United States. These two events, trans- 
piring simultaneously, are treated in the present and next follow- 
ing chapters. 

Six of the Great Powers — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, 
France, Great Britain, and Japan — had entered the war in 1914, 
and from such a supreme test of strength the remaining European 
Great Power, Italy, could not long hold aloof. Only one Great 
Power — the United States of America — preserved neutrality 
throughout 191 5 and 1916. The unique position of the United 
States during those years was due less to lack of interest in world- 
affairs than to geographical situation and historical traditions. 

The United States was separated from the chief centers of 
military operations by two or three thousand miles of ocean. 
Because of her vast territorial extent on the American continent 
and the abundance of her natural resources, she was not depend- 
ent, as were certain European countries, upon foreign trade for 
adequate supplies of food, fuel, and clothing. Rendered eco- 
nomically self-sufficing by her geographical situation, she adhered 
by tradition to political isolation. 

Once upon a time, almost a century and a half ago, the United 
States had been in formal alliance with France, but this alliance 
had been made for the definite purpose of assuring American in- 
dependence, and once the purpose was achieved the alliance 
lapsed. To be sure, Americans still had a lively sympathy — 
in the abstract — for the land which had given them a Lafayette 
and a Rochambeau in their hour of direst need ; but there was an 
ail-too prevalent notion in the United States, on the eve of the 
Great War, that modern Frenchmen were unworthy and de- 
generate descendants of illustrious sires. 

For more than a century Americans had almost superstitiously 
heeded the letter of Washington's admonitions against "en- 



204 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

tangling alliances," and their insistent aloofness from world-re- 
sponsibilities had fostered among them a notable provinciality. 
It was natural that many of them should maintain a traditional 
dislike and hatred of England ; George III meant more to them 
than George V, and the "patriotic" school-book accounts of the 
Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 tended to obscure the 
cultural bonds which united all the English-speaking peoples and 
to keep Americans in ignorance of the amazing democratic de- 
velopments in England during the nineteenth and twentieth cen- 
turies. To the traditional American opinion of Great Britain, 
the host of Irish immigrants gave confirmation. 

Moreover, on the eve of the Great War, Germany was held in 
high esteem in the United States. The sudden rise of imperial 
Germany, with her marvelous achievements in science and in- 
dustry, was likened to the mighty progress of republican America. 
Americans praised the splendid qualities of sobriety and thrift 
and domesticity which seemed to characterize their numerous 
fellow-citizens of German origin. And between New World Amer- 
ica and the Germany of the Old World, conspicuous citizens of 
the United States — public officials, college-presidents, and phil- 
anthropical capitalists — sought to forge intellectual and spiritual 
chains. German literature was taught and admired in the United 
States as was no other foreign literature. German music was 
rendered and appreciated as was no other. German scholarship 
was prized and patterned as was no other. 

America's political isolation served to confirm popular misap- 
prehensions about foreign peoples and at the same time to 
strengthen popular devotion to the traditional foreign policies 
of the United States Government. These policies may be stated 
as three. In the first place, there was the "Monroe Doctrine," 
the constant refusal of the United States to interfere in European 
disputes or to be entangled in any foreign alliance, her chief ex- 
ternal interest being to keep the New World free from European 
aggression. Secondly, there was "arbitration," the repeated 
attempts of the United States to substitute a judicial for a mili- 
tary settlement ot international differences. Thirdly, there was 
the "freedom of the seas," for which the United States Govern- 
ment had persistently contended ; save during the Civil War, 
America had espoused the doctrine of the inviolability of private 
property at sea, a generous free list, and a narrow definition of 
contraband, and in urging the acceptance of this doctrine by 
European governments she had been led into frequent diplomatic 
clashes with Great Britain. 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 205 

Under these circumstances none of the belligerents in 19 14 ex- 
pected the United States actively to intervene in the Great War. 
And in America there was no considerable movement at the out- 
set in behalf of intervention on either side. In fact, as the war 
progressed, the American Government and the bulk of the Amer- 
ican people seemed to think that if the United States adhered 
loyally to the Monroe Doctrine, she must hold aloof from the 
conflict in Europe, and, if she held aloof, she would be in a better 
position impartially to advocate arbitration and freedom of the 
seas, and eventually to assume leadership in rebuilding a ruined 
world and healing the wounds of the nations. America's part 
in the Great War should be curative, not punitive. 

But those persons who thought the United States, in the long 
run, could hold aloof from the Great War were quite mistaken. 
Despite traditional political isolation and apparent economic self- 
sufficiency, the United States was drawn irresistibly, willy-nilly, 
into the world maelstrom. For the world of the twentieth cen- 
tury was very different from that world of the eighteenth cen- 
tury in which American independence and American traditions 
were implanted. Between the eighteenth and twentieth cen- 
turies had occurred a series of events in the common, workaday 
life of mankind so amazing and epochal as to justify its descrip- 
tion as an " Industrial Revolution." It was this Industrial Revo- 
lution which girdled the globe with railways, steamship lines, 
telegraph and telephone wires, and drew all sorts of men together. 
It was this Industrial Revolution which brought the chief nations 
of the world in closer contact with one another than were the 
original thirteen English-speaking American colonies. It was 
this Industrial Revolution which created a world-market for 
capital, raw materials, finished products, labor, and ideas, and 
which, by breaking down the real barriers of local isolation 
and self-sufficiency, laid deep and broad, if imperceptibly, the 
economic foundations for a political superstructure of interna- 
tionalism. 

No longer could there be exclusively European questions or 
narrowly American problems. The cultures and the interests of 
America and Europe were now so inextricably intertangled that 
any important armed conflict on either hemisphere would cer- 
tainly affect seriously all neutrals the world over. If signs of the 
times were read aright, the Great War would be a war not only 
in Europe but on all the seas, and in all dominions beyond the 
seas, and passing strange would that state be which could pre- 
serve an undisturbed neutrality in such a cataclysm. 



2 o6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

How the United States underwent a transformation in thought 
and policy from aloofness and strict neutrality and fancied secur- 
ity, in August, 1914, to belligerency and juncture with the Allies 
in Europe, in April, 191 7, is a long story, only a few of whose 
episodes can be mentioned here. Early in the war, the splendid 
stand of the French armies at the Marne and the flocking to 
Britain's standard of Canadians and Australians and East In- 
dians gave America new ideas about French character and British 
loyalty and a notable respect for the Allied cause, just as the 
initial atrocities of the Germans in Belgium and France opened 
American eyes to the fact that the much-vaunted Teuton had 
other and less desirable assets than literature, music, and scholar- 
ship. Gradually the notion grew prevalent in America that im- 
perial and militaristic Germany was a horrible menace to civili- 
zation, and that France and Great Britain were fighting for some- 
thing vastly more significant than Alsace-Lorraine and German 
colonies : they were fighting in defense of civilization itself. For 
this reason the majority of Americans became sympathizers with 
the Allies, but between sympathy and active participation there 
was still a wide gulf. 

It was not long before the United States as a neutral was drawn 
into diplomatic conflicts with the belligerents over rights at sea. 
American pride was especially wounded by insistent representa- 
tions of the German Government that the United States had no 
right to trade in munitions with the Allies. And American feel- 
ings were outraged by the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915, 
and by the preposterous German demands that American citizens 
should surrender their right of free travel by sea. The protracted 
diplomatic negotiations on the subject of ruthless submarine war- 
fare sorely tried the patience of the American people. And the 
loud-mouthed expressions of sympathy for the German cause on 
the part of many German-Americans, as well as the manifest in- 
sincerity and procrastination of the German diplomatists, only 
stimulated fresh outbursts of popular anger in the United States. 
It was not until May 4, 1916, — a year after the sinking of the 
Lusitania, — that the German Government promised henceforth 
not to sink merchant vessels without warning and without due 
provision for the safety of passengers, but even then the promise 
was faltering and conditional. 

That Germany's protestations of friendship for the United 
States were essentially insincere, was proved by a continuous 
campaign of German espionage and outrage in the New World. 
Throughout 191 5 and 191 6 diplomatic agents of the Central Em- 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 207 

pires organized and supported a staff of conspirators against the 
laws of the United States; they stirred up strikes in munition 
plants ; they manufactured bombs for the destruction of factories 
and ships ; they perpetrated passport frauds. In September, 
191 5, the United States had to request the recall of the Austro- 
Hungarian ambassador, Dr. Constantine Dumba, because of his 
systematic instigation of labor difficulties. In November, 191 5, 
the German ambassador, Count Bernstorff, was informed that 
his military and naval attaches, Captains von Papen and Boy-Ed, 
were "no longer acceptable or personae gratae to this Govern- 
ment," and their recall was demanded because "of what this 
Government considers improper activities in military and naval 
matters.** 

But Germany, after the recall of Dumba, Papen, and Boy-Ed, 
continued her machinations in America. As the Committee on 
Public Information of the United States Government subse- 
quently said: "In this country official agents of the Central 
Powers — protected from criminal prosecution by diplomatic 
immunity — conspired against our internal peace, placed spies 
and agents provocateurs throughout the length and breadth of 
our land, and even in high positions of trust in departments of 
our Government. While expressing a cordial friendship for the 
people of the United States, the Government of Germany had its 
agents at work both in Latin America and in Japan. They bought 
and subsidized papers and supported speakers there to arouse 
feelings of bitterness and distrust against us in those friendly 
nations in order to embroil us in war. They were inciting insurrec- 
tion in Cuba, in Haiti, and in San Domingo ; their hostile hand 
was stretched out to take the Danish Islands ; and everywhere 
they were abroad sowing the seeds of dissension, trying to stir 
up one nation against another, and all against the United States. 
In their sum these various operations amounted to direct assault 
of the Monroe Doctrine." 

There were persons, of course, who were only too anxious to 
utilize the sinister activities of German provocateurs in order to 
inflame the Americans against Germany and to secure for the 
Allies the active aid of the United States. The Entente Powers 
countenanced and encouraged widespread propaganda in their 
own behalf ; with one hand they cut off German postal and tele- 
graphic communications, while with the other they poured into 
America a flood of books, pamphlets, and newspapers, favorable 
to their own cause. Distinguished Frenchmen made lecture- 
tours throughout the country. And the British resorted to every 



208 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

known device of propaganda from employing secret-service agents 
in New York to maintaining at Washington the great journalist, 
Lord Northcliffe, with a host of assistants, as a publicity director. 
With these official or semi-official propagandists of the Entente 
cooperated, whether for economic or for sentimental motives, a 
considerable number of influential Americans, such as bankers 
who made loans to the Allied Governments or acted as purchas- 
ing agents for the Allies, manufacturers of munitions and other 
war materiel who sold their goods to the Allies, and college pro- 
fessors who had been educated in France or England or who from 
their studies and researches had developed a special admiration 
for the literature and learning of one or another of the Allied 
countries. Entente propaganda in the United States was even 
more general than that of the Teutons ; it was also more adroit, 
more sympathetic, and more conformable to American prejudices 
and American wishes. 

During 1916 two currents of opinion were steadily growing in 
the United States. On the one hand was the conviction of such 
men as Ex-President Roosevelt and Elihu Root that the Great 
War was in very truth America's war, that the Allies were fight- 
ing for America's interests, the greatest of which was the main- 
tenance of the public right. On the other hand was the desire, 
cherished by such leaders as President Wilson and Ex-President 
Taft, that the Great War should be the last war fought under the 
old bad conditions of international isolation and that America 
should take an important part at the right moment in the estab- 
lishment of a League to Enforce Peace. President Wilson, in 
accepting renomination in 191 6, declared: "No nation can any 
longer remain neutral as against any willful destruction of the 
peace of the world. . . . The nations of the world must unite 
in joint guarantee that whatever is done to disturb the whole 
world's life must be tested in the court of the whole world's opin- 
ion before it is attempted." 

For a time in the autumn of 19 16 American interest was ab- 
sorbed in the electoral campaign for the presidency. In the ranks 
of both the Democratic and the Republican parties were German 
sympathizers and also strong advocates of the Allies. Mr. Hughes, 
the Republican candidate, contented himself with general criti- 
cism of Wilson's policy towards Mexico and Germany, and took 
no clear stand on the question of intervention. The slogan that 
"Wilson kept us out of the war" undoubtedly drew votes from 
American pacifists and traditionalists for the Democratic can- 
didate ; and President Wilson was reelected by a small majority. 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 209 

Woodrow Wilson could properly interpret his reelection in 
November, 19 16, as a warrant from the American people to keep 
the United States at peace and to endeavor to secure international 
reform. At any rate he speedily urged on the belligerents the 
formation of a League of Nations, the while giving no indication 
that he would take sides with either coalition. On December 18, 
1916, he addressed to each of the militant Powers a remarkable 
note which had been prepared quite independently of the Teu- 
tonic Peace Drive then in full swing. 

The American note of December 18 called attention to striking 
similarities in the generally professed war aims of the Allies and 
of the Central Powers. "Each side desires to make the rights 
and privileges of weak peoples and small states as secure against 
aggression and denial in the future as the rights and privileges 
of the great and powerful states now at war. Each wishes itself 
to be made secure in the future, along with all other nations and 
peoples, against the recurrence of wars like this, and against op- 
pression and selfish interference of any kind. Each would be 
jealous of the formation of any more rival leagues to preserve an 
uncertain balance of power against multiplying suspicions ; but 
each is ready to consider the formation of a League of Nations 
to insure peace and justice throughout the world." The note 
then went on to beg the belligerents to state their special war- 
aims more explicitly, and ended with the significant words : " The 
President is not proposing peace ; he is not even offering media- 
tion. He is merely proposing that soundings be taken in order 
that we may learn, the neutral nations with the belligerents, how 
near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs with 
an intense and increasing longing." 

The replies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, on December 
26, 19 1 6, were essentially the same and equally vague and un- 
satisfactory. Germany, for example, suggested "the speedy 
assembly, on neutral ground, of delegates of the warring states" 
and a direct exchange of views, but declared that plans for the 
prevention of future wars could not be taken up until the end 
"of the present conflict of exhaustion"; only then would Ger- 
many be ready "to cooperate with the United States in this sub- 
lime task." 

The Allies, replying to President Wilson on January 10, 191 7, 
explained that they could not formulate their war-aims in detail 
until the hour for negotiations arrived, but they associated them- 
selves with the projects of a League of Nations and stated some 
of their objects quite specifically. "The civilized world knows 



210 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

that they imply, necessarily and first of all, the restoration of 
Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro, with the compensation due to 
them ; the evacuation of the invaded territories in France, in 
Russia, in Rumania, with just reparation ; the reorganization 
of Europe, guaranteed by a stable regime and based at once on 
respect for nationalities and on the right to full security and liberty 
of economic development possessed by all peoples, small and great, 
and at the same time upon territorial conventions and interna- 
tional settlements such as to guarantee land and sea frontiers 
against unjustified attack ; the restoration of provinces formerly 
torn from the Allies by force and against the wish of their in- 
habitants ; the liberation of the Italians, as also of the Slavs, 
Rumanians, and Czechoslovaks from foreign domination ; the 
setting free of populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the 
Turks ; and the turning out of Europe of the Ottoman Empire 
as decidedly foreign to Western civilization." 

The obvious contrast between the candid answer of the Allies 
and the ambiguous replies of the Central Powers served to deepen 
those currents of public opinion which had been gathering head- 
way in America throughout 1916. It now seemed as though the 
Allies could be counted upon to cooperate with the United States 
in abolishing international isolation and in fashioning a League 
of Nations, and, whether such a league should prove permanently 
effective or not, it now became patent to a majority of Americans 
that the Allies were fighting at least indirectly for the United 
States, that a Germany emerging triumphant from the Great 
War could not long be restrained from forcing her Kultur on the 
New World. 

Utilizing the replies to his note of December 18, and the state 
of public opinion throughout the country, President Wilson ap- 
peared before the United States Senate on January 22, 191 7, and 
delivered a remarkable discourse. The peace that would end 
the war, he said, must be followed by a " definite concert of Powers" 
which would "make it virtually impossible that any such catas- 
trophe should ever overwhelm us again." In that the United 
States must play a part. It was right before such a settlement 
was reached that the American Government should frankly state 
conditions on which it would feel justified in asking the American 
people "to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a League 
of Peace." He had come to state those conditions : 

"No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not (1) recog- 
nize and accept the principle that governments derive all their 
just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 211 

anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sover- 
eignty as if they were property. . . . 

"I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one 
accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine 
of the world : that no nation should seek to extend its policy over 
any other nation or people but that every people should be left 
free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, 
unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the 
great and powerful. 

"I am proposing (2) that all nations henceforth avoid entan- 
gling alliances which would draw them into competitions 6i power, 
catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb 
their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There 
is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite 
to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the 
common interest and are free to live their own lives under a com- 
mon protection. 

"I am proposing ... (3) that freedom of the seas which in 
international conference after conference representatives of the 
United States have urged with the eloquence of those who 
are the convinced disciples of liberty ; and (4) that modera- 
tion of armaments which make of armies and navies a power 
for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish 
violence. 

" (5) Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will 
be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantee of 
the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force 
of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or 
projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, 
could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is 
to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major 
force of mankind." 

Thus President Wilson cleared the ground for the building of 
a League of Nations to supplant the international anarchy which, 
according to him, was the prime cause of the Great War and the 
chief danger to the future peace of the world. That the President 
still thought it possible and desirable for the United States to 
preserve neutrality was evinced by his declaration in the same 
discourse of January 22, that the peace about to be negotiated 
must be a "peace without victory," that is, a peace not dictated 
by a victor to a loser, leaving a heritage of resentment. By im- 
plication it meant that the Allies must not seek to destroy and 
dismember Germany, and, on the other hand, that Germany 



212 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

must abandon any project of mastering other European countries 
or of dominating the world. 

Though many citizens of the Entente states misunderstood 
the phrase "peace without victory" and grumbled at its utterance 
by the president of a prosperous neutral which was supposed to 
know nothing of the sacrifice and hardships of the belligerents, 
the Allied Governments promptly repudiated the suggestion that 
they might be seeking the annihilation or enslavement of Ger- 
many. On the whole, the President's proposals met with an 
unexpectedly favorable reception in the Entente countries. 

Promptly the Allies redoubled their efforts to draw America 
actively into the war. The second half of the year 1916, as we 
have seen, 1 had not been particularly advantageous to them: 
Rumania had collapsed; Russia was faltering; and neither on 
the Italian nor on the Western Front, nor in Macedonia, had any 
brilliant success been achieved. Pacifism and defeatism 2 were ap- 
pearing in France and Italy ; war- weariness was growing through- 
out all the Entente countries. If the energetic assistance of the 
one remaining neutral Great Power could not immediately be 
secured, Allied morale might completely disappear and Germany 
might win a speedy victory. It was a dark hour in the history 
of the Entente and of the world. Only the United States could 
dispel the darkness, and to this end English and French and Ital- 
ian propagandists brought all sorts of pressure to bear upon the 
American Government and the American people. They pressed 
the argument that America's welfare and safety all along had 
depended upon their success and that now their success depended 
upon America's direct aid. They called loudly to the United 
States. 

Germany herself was responsible for the suddenness and ease 
with which the United States heard and heeded the Allied call. 
The German Government had failed to respond frankly and sin- 
cerely to the President's note of December 18, or to his address 
of January 22. While it was endeavoring to create a pacifist 
sentiment in the Entente countries, it was girding itself and en- 
couraging its own people to undertake another campaign for the 
mastery of Europe and the domination of the world. This time 
Germany would not drive furiously with her armies against France 
or Russia or Italy or against a Serbia or a Rumania ; rather, she 
would hit at Great Britain, the brain and sinew of the hostile 
coalition ; she would challenge the mistress of the seas ruthlessly 
by a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. 

1 See above, p. 193. 2 See below, pp. 287-298. 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 213 

THE OCCASION: UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE 

It has already been explained that the chief weapon of any- 
German counter-offensive against Great Britain was the sub- 
marine, but that this weapon would be ineffectual unless its use 
were unrestricted. Unrestricted use of the submarine, though 
absolutely at variance with recognized rules of international con- 
duct, had always been advocated by Tirpitz, Reventlow, and other 
Pan-Germans who viewed England as the main stumbling-block 
to Teutonic victory ; it had actually been attempted in the spring 
of 1915 and had been abandoned definitely in May, 1916, only be- 
cause of the threatening expostulations of the United States and 
other neutral Powers and because of a conviction in the minds of 
more moderate German statesmen, such as the Chancellor Beth- 
mann-Hollweg, that there were other and less perilous means of 
bringing Britain to terms. 

From May, 1916, to January, 191 7, Bethmann-Hollweg, hold- 
ing the German submarines in leading strings, pursued in turn 
two policies which were calculated to disrupt the Entente and 
bring a German peace. The one was the smashing of the Allied 
fronts on the continent of Europe — the military drives against 
Verdun, against Vicenza, and into Rumania. The other was the 
diplomatic peace drive, culminating in the Teutonic peace-note 
of December, 1916. But both policies miscarried. The Teutons 
failed to obtain a military decision ; they failed likewise to make 
the Allies sue for peace. And meanwhile the Allies were tighten- 
ing their economic strangle-hold on Mittel-Europa. 

Tirpitz had been forced out of the German naval office in the 
spring of 1916, but from his retirement he had never ceased to 
berate Bethmann-Hollweg for what he deemed a cowardly sur- 
render of the best German weapons to the susceptibilities of 
"mercenary" America; and as Bethmann-Hollweg's alternative 
policies went wrong, the popular following of Tirpitz in Germany 
grew noisier and more numerous. Eventually there was a veri- 
table clamor for the resumption of unrestricted submarine war- 
fare, cost what it might. Even the more moderate elements in 
German public life were won over, by the failure of their peace- 
drive, to espouse a campaign of ruthlessness. Germany had 
already risked much in pursuit of world dominion ; Bethmann- 
Hollweg was now willing to risk everything. 

On January 31, 1917, the German Government officially noti- 
fied the United States that inasmuch as the Allies had rejected 
Germany's peace offer, and inasmuch as the Entente Powers, led 



214 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



by England, had sought for two and a half years to starve Ger- 
many into submission, " a new situation has thus been created 
which forces Germany to new decisions," and that therefore Ger- 
many would exercise the freedom of action which she reserved to 
herself in her note of May 4, 1916. Accordingly, announcement 
was made that from February 1, 191 7, all sea traffic within cer- 
tain zones adjoining Great Britain, France, and Italy, and in the 
eastern Mediterranean, would, "without further notice, be pre- 
vented by all weapons." This meant that German submarines 



'^S CALE OF MILE9 " ? 
100 200 300 400 S0Q.H 




German "War Zone" of February i, 1917 

proposed to sink at sight within these areas all vessels whether 
neutral or belligerent. 

The German note of January 31, 191 7, reopened the whole sub- 
marine question not only, but further outraged American pride 
(and, it must be said, touched at an ironical point the American 
sense of humor) by laying down hard and fast rules for United 
States shipping. "Sailing of regular American passenger steam- 
ships," stated a condescending memorandum which accompanied 
the German note, "may continue undisturbed after February 1, 
1917, if— (a) the port of destination is Falmouth; (b) sailing 
to, or coming from, that port, course is taken via the Scilly Islands 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 215 

and a point 50 N., 20 W. ; (c) the steamships are marked in 
the following way, which must not be allowed to other vessels in 
American ports — on ship's hull and superstructure three ver- 
tical stripes, one meter wide each, to be painted alternately white 
and red ; each mast should show a large flag checkered white 
and red, and the stern the American national flag ; care should 
be taken that, during dark, national flag and painted marks are 
easily recognizable from a distance, and that the boats are well 
lighted throughout ; (d) one steamship a week sails in each di- 
rection, with arrival at Falmouth on Sunday and departure from 
Falmouth on Wednesday ; (e) the United States Government 
guarantees that no contraband (according to German contra- 
band list) is carried by those steamships." 

Every right to the freedom of the seas for which the United 
States had ever contended was violated by the brusque German 
declaration of January 31, and all those emotions of dislike, fear, 
and hatred of Germany, which had been steadily heightened in 
the United States by adroit Allied propaganda, were instanta- 
neously welded into resolute hostility. On February 3, the Ger- 
man ambassador at Washington, Count Bernstorff, was handed 
his passports, and the American ambassador at Berlin, James 
Gerard, was summoned home. On the same day President Wil- 
son told Congress that he still could not believe the German 
Government meant " to do in fact what they have warned us they 
feel at liberty to do," and that only "actual overt acts" would 
convince him of their hostile purpose. But he ended with the 
solemn announcement that if American ships were sunk and 
American lives were lost, he would come again to Congress and 
ask for power to take the necessary steps for the protection of 
American rights. 

The rupture of diplomatic relations between the United States 
and Germany did not necessarily mean war, though it pointed in 
that direction. Undoubtedly a majority of the American people 
still cherished the idea expressed by the President that Germany 
would not venture to put her threats into effect. Nevertheless 
the mere threats of Germany sufficed to deter American ships 
from sailing for Europe, with the result that powerful economic 
interests in America increased the clamor against Germany, the 
excitement being particularly acute in New England and in the 
Middle Atlantic States. 

On February 26, 1917, President Wilson again addressed Con- 
gress, pointing out that Germany had placed a practical embargo 
on American shipping, and urging that the United States resort 



216 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

to " armed neutrality," a measure just short of war. On March i 
the House of Representatives voted "armed neutrality" by 403 
to 13, but in the Senate the measure was defeated by a "filibuster " 
of a handful of "willful men," who prolonged the debate until 
the expiration of the congressional session, on March 4. 

In the meantime, on February 28, the Associated Press pub- 
lished an order which had been issued on January 16 by Herr 
Zimmermann, German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to 
the German minister in Mexico, and which had fallen into the 
hands of the United States Government. The "Zimmermann 
Note" instructed the German minister to form an alliance with 
Mexico in the event of war between Germany and the United 
States, and to offer as a bribe the states of Texas, New Mexico, 
and Arizona ; it also suggested that efforts might be made to 
seduce Japan from the Allies and bring her into partnership with 
Mexico and Germany. From the date of the note — January 
16 — it was obvious that the German Government had been 
planning the resumption of ruthless submarine warfare at the 
very time when it was pretending to be most friendly to the United 
States, and from the contents it was apparent that Germany 
would go to any length in opposing American rights. The result 
of the disclosure was increased resentment against Germany, 
especially in the southwestern states and on the Pacific coast. 
The whole United States was being rapidly galvanized into war- 
activity. 

Woodrow Wilson, in his inaugural address, on March 5, said: 
"We stand firm in armed neutrality, since it seems that in no 
other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and can- 
not forego. We may be drawn on by circumstances, not by our 
own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as 
we see them and a more immediate association with the great 
struggle itself." One week later he issued formal orders to arm 
American merchant vessels against submarines. And within 
another week the "actual overt acts" of which he had warned 
in his speech before Congress on February 3 were committed. 
On March 16-17 three homeward-bound ships, 1 — American- 
built, American-owned, and American-manned, — were sunk by 
German submarines. German defiance of the United States was 
now flagrant and unmistakable. 

Not only was the case against Germany perfectly plain, but 
an event had just occurred which now made it easier for the 
United States to intervene in the Great War on the side of the 
1 The Vigilancia, the City of Memphis, and the Illinois. 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 217 

Allies. It was in March, 191 7, that the Russian Revolution 
broke out ; the Tsar abdicated ; a provisional democratic govern- 
ment was proclaimed; and on March 21, the United States led 
all the nations of the world in according recognition to the new 
regime at Petrograd. The destruction of autocracy in Russia 
signified that the lines were now drawn quite distinctly between 
isolated, militaristic, oligarchical Mittel-Enropa, on the one hand, 
and a league of peace-loving, democratic nations, on the other. 
So long as Russia retained a reactionary absolutism, the United 
States might well adhere to a policy of "armed neutrality," but 
as soon as Russia patterned her political institutions after those 
of democratic France, Britain, and Italy, then the United States 
saw the way clear to a juncture with the Allies and to a fight to 
the finish with Germany. The Great War would no longer be 
in any respect a conflict between dynasties; it would be "the 
eternal war of liberty and despotism." 

On April 2, 191 7, President Wilson came before Congress and 
asked for a declaration of war against Germany. His address 
on that occasion, one of the greatest of America's famous docu- 
ments, was in part as follows: "With a profound sense of the 
solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and 
of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating 
obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that 
the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German 
Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Gov- 
ernment and people of the United States ; that it formally accept 
the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it ; and 
that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more 
thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and em- 
ploy all its resources to bring the Government of the German 
Empire to terms and end the war. ... It will involve the ut- 
most practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the Gov- 
ernments now at war with Germany. . . . 

"A steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained except 
by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Govern- 
ment could be trusted to keep faith within it or to observe its 
covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opin- 
ion .... Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their 
honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of man- 
kind to any narrow interest of their own. . . . 

" The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must 
be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We 
have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no domin- 



218 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

ion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material com- 
pensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but 
one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be 
satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith 
and the freedom of nations can make them. . . . 

"It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into 
war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization 
itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more pre- 
cious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have 
always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right 
of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own 
Governments, for the rights ana liberties of small nations, for a 
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as 
shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world 
itself at last free. 

"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has come when America 
is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles 
that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has 
treasured. God helping her, she can do no other." 

On April 4, the Senate adopted a declaration of war by 82 votes 
to 6, and on the next day the House, by 373 votes to 50. And 
on April 6, 191 7, the President issued a proclamation declaring 
that "a state of war exists between the United States and the 
Imperial German Government." Two days later the United 
States broke off diplomatic relations with Austria-Hungary, al- 
though a declaration of war against the Dual Monarchy was de- 
layed until December 7. 

Thus by April, 191 7, the resumption of unrestricted submarine 
warfare by Germany had brought the United States, the last of 
the world's Great Powers, into the war on the side of the Allies. 
Furthermore, German ruthlessness now stirred up a wave of pro- 
Ally sentiment among the remaining neutrals, and protests against 
submarine warfare and barred zones were speedily filed at Berlin 
by Spain, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, China, and the 
republics of Latin America. Within a week of America's declara- 
tion of war, Brazil and Bolivia severed diplomatic relations with 
Germany, and Cuba and Panama formally joined the Allies. 

The intervention of the United States was a godsend to the 
Entente, for at the time, as subsequently was generally admitted, 
the Entente was on its "last legs." Russia was soon to quit the 
war altogether, and France and Italy were alike suffering from 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 219 

bad cases of "nerves." Now, however, the United States could 
put at the disposal of the Entente her rich metals, her copious 
foodstuffs, her numerous shipyards, her powerful fleet, her vast 
man power, and, most significant of all, her fresh enthusiasm and 
her unselfish idealism. The character of the Great War in popu- 
lar imagination was changed for the better, and the chances of 
victory for the public right were enormously increased. Ger- 
many, already inferior to the Allies in natural resources and stay- 
ing power, would soon be rendered hopelessly inferior. For this 
denouement Germany had only her own ruthlessness to blame. 

THE PROBLEM : PREPAREDNESS 

Germany had staked everything on the success of her subma- 
rine warfare, and the intervention of the United States did not 
swerve her from her purpose. She realized that the United States 
was ill prepared for immediate active participation in the struggle 
in Europe. No matter how energetic the American Government 
might be, it would certainly take the whole year 191 7 for the 
United States to raise, train, equip, and transport to Europe an 
army large enough to have any appreciable effect upon the for- 
tunes of the war. Food, munitions, and shipping, in addition 
to men, would have to be supplied in enormous quantities not 
only for an American Expeditionary Force but for the Allies also, 
and as yet America was not ready to fulfill these obligations. It 
would be the spring of 191 8, at the earliest, before Germany need 
reckon seriously with the United States. 

In the meantime Germany would vigorously prosecute her 
submarine warfare against Great Britain. Ruthlessly would she 
seek to destroy every merchant vessel endeavoring to enter or 
leave a British port, and in this way she would destroy Allied 
shipping, put a practical embargo on British industry and trade, 
deprive the Allied armies of munitions and supplies, and starve 
out the civilian population of the United Kingdom. If all went 
well for the Germans, Great Britain would be brought to terms; 
and once Great Britain submitted, France and Italy and Russia 
would have to sue for peace. And with Allied shipping destroyed 
and with the Allies submitting to the inevitable, there would be 
neither means nor purpose of transporting an American Expedi- 
tionary Force to Europe. American intervention, Germany 
thought, could not be effective before the spring of 1918, and then 
it would be too late. Perhaps Germany was again over-opti- 
mistic, but at any rate the Allies themselves were worried. They 



220 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

trembled when they tried to face the question. Could the United 
States complete preparedness before Germany had succeeded in 
her unrestricted submarine warfare? 

No sooner had the United States declared war against-Germany 
than special missions visited America from England and France 
— the British mission headed by Foreign Secretary Balfour, and 
the French by Ex-Premier Viviani and Marshal Jofifre. These 
missions explained the dire situation confronting the Allies and 
the urgent need for the United States not only to dispatch sup- 
plies of all sorts to their countries and to assist in averting the 
submarine danger but to rush large armies to France, if not im- 
mediately to engage in the actual fighting, at least to reassure the 
Allied troops that the United States was really in the war and 
thus to strengthen their morale. The response was sympathetic 
and enthusiastic. 

It is perhaps regrettable that the American Government did 
not take advantage of the exigencies of the Allies and the visit 
of the foreign missions to make full participation of the United 
States in the war conditional upon the formal repudiation by the 
Entente of all existing "secret treaties." If this had been done, 
most probably the "secret treaties" would have been thrown 
overboard, the Great War in its subsequent phases would have 
been waged more distinctly in harmony with the spirit that im- 
pelled American intervention, and certain very troublesome prob- 
lems which later confronted the Peace Congress would never have 
arisen or would have been solved more equitably. As it was, 
however, the visiting missions carefully concealed from President 
Wilson the existence of numerous secret international engage- 
ments by which they were bound, notably the pledges made Japan 
in February, 191 7, in respect of the German rights in the Chinese 
province of Shantung and the German Pacific islands north of 
the equator. That the United States made no such conditions 
or reservations was a tribute to American unselfishness and like- 
wise to the naive faith of the American Government that all other 
Powers arrayed against Germany were equally unselfish. At any 
rate America was resolved to show the faith that was in her not 
alone by words but also by deeds. 

It was none too soon. Even before the formal resumption of 
unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 191 7, Germany 
had made noteworthy progress in destroying Allied shipping and 
in hampering Allied commerce. Since August, 1914, every month 
had witnessed the sinking of hundreds of thousands of tons of 
belligerent and neutral merchant vessels. In 1914 nearly 700,000 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 221 

tons of British and Allied and neutral shipping had been destroyed ; 
in 1915 the amount increased to 1,700,000 tons; and in 1916 it 
soared to 2,800,000 tons. Apparently, as time went on, the Ger- 
man submarines were becoming more numerous, more daring, 
and more experienced. By February, 1917, submarine warfare 
had passed its trial stage and was to be put to the supreme test. 
And just as the German navy yards completed a host of new sub- 
marines and German factories equipped them with powerful tor- 
pedoes for their deadly work, the German Government laid aside 
all pretense of observing international law in their use and pro- 
claimed the ruthless orders of February 1. 

The German campaign of sea-ruthlessness started off with/ 
spirit and dash. From January to June, 191 7, German sub-' 
marines sank 2,275,000 tons of British shipping and 1,580,000 
tons of allied and neutral shipping, — an aggregate loss to the 
Entente of nearly four million tons in six months. If this huge . 
total could be doubled in the second half of 191 7, German hopes / 
and Allied fears might be justified. 

As a matter of fact, however, the spirit and dash which char- 
acterized the submarine campaign of Germany in the first half 
of 191 7 were not sustained in the second half of the year, for the 
Allies were finding means of lessening the menace. Merchant 
vessels began to sail under convoy, guarded above by dirigible 
balloons and hydroplanes, and on the surface by a fleet of patrol 
boats. Close watch was kept of the movements of submarines, 
either by means of lookouts on patrol boats or by means of wire- 
less operators who detected messages passing between the sub- 
marines and the German naval bases. The camouflaging of 
Allied ships, moreover, proved a useful deception; "the war 
brought no stranger spectacle than that of a convoy of steamships 
plowing along through the middle of the ocean streaked and be- 
spotted indiscriminately with every color of the rainbow in a way 
more bizarre than the wildest dreams of a sailor's first night ashore. ' ' 
Gradually, Allied naval commanders were enabled to trap and 
destroy, or capture, German submarines ; and the German au- 
thorities found it increasingly difficult to repair and replenish 
their submarines and to make their sailors undertake joyfully 
the new hazards of life in a periscope. Though the losses to\ 
Allied shipping continued heavy throughout 191 7 and far into 
1918, the turn of the tide was reached in the midsummer of 191 7. 
In the second half of 191 7 the destruction of Allied and neutral 
shipping amounted in the aggregate to two and three-fourths 
million tons, as against nearly four millions in the first half of the 



222 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

year. It was obvious that Germany had miscalculated the suc- 
cess of unrestricted submarine warfare and that Great Britain 
[would not be brought to terms by the spring of 19 18. 

It became obvious, too, that Germany had miscalculated the 
time required for the United States to intervene actively in the 
war. For the United States, after declaring war on April 6, 1917, 
lost no time in collecting vast sums of money, in gathering and 
training a large army, and in mobilizing industries and resources. 
Immediately German ships in American harbors were seized, and 
the navy and the small standing army were mobilized. A Coun- 
cil of National Defense was formed, comprising the secretaries 
of war, navy, interior, agriculture, commerce, and labor, with an 
advisory commission of seven men drawn from civil life, and 
with a host of affiliated local boards and committees throughout 
the country to assist in coordinating America's war efforts. To 
arouse an intelligent popular enthusiasm for the war, a Committee 
on Public Information was created under the chairmanship of 
George Creel. There was some natural and inevitable "mud- 
dling" in transforming America suddenly from a peace footing 
to a war basis, but, considering the manifold difficulties and handi- 
caps, the task as a whole was achieved with surprising efficiency 
and dispatch. 

A Selective Service Act, passed in May, authorized the Presi- 
dent to increase the regular army, by voluntary enlistment, to 
287,000 men, the maximum strength provided by existing law; 
to draft into service all members of the National Guard ; and to 
raise by selective draft an additional force of 500,000 men, and 
another 500,000 at his discretion. The age limits for drafted 
men were twenty-one and thirty years, and all male persons be- 
tween these ages were required to register "in accordance with 
regulations to be prescribed by the President." On June 5, 
"registration day," some nine and one-half million young Ameri- 
cans enrolled, and the drawing of the 625,000 men to form the 
first selective army took place at Washington on July 15. In 
July the National Guard was mobilized, and in September the 
mobilization of the new national army began. 

Meanwhile Congress was enacting a series of important war 
measures : two liberty loan acts (April and September) ; an es- 
pionage act, in June ; an aviation act, in July ; food control and 
shipping acts, in August ; and in September, a revenue act im- 
posing war taxes on income and excess profits, a trading-with- 
the-enemy act, and a soldiers' and sailors' insurance act. During 
the congressional session which closed in October, 1917, appro- 



THE UNITED STATES INTERVENES 223 

priations were made totaling nearly nineteen billion dollars, of 
which seven billions were to cover loans to the Allies. In July 
Mr. Herbert Hoover became "food dictator," and in August Mr. 
Garfield was appointed "fuel administrator." In December the 
Government took over the management and operation of the 
railways. Every possible step was taken to expedite the pro- 
duction of munitions and other war supplies, including foodstuffs, 
and to transport all these commodities to American seaports on 
the Atlantic coast and thence to Europe for the relief alike of the 
armed forces and of the civilian population, of the nations now 
associated with the United States in the Great War. To place 
American grain, meat, munitions, and money so promptly and so 
effectively at the disposal of the Allies was of itself no mean con- 
tribution of the United States to the eventual defeat of Germany. 

But the United States Government was resolved to go much 
farther and to put American troops in front-line trenches along- 
side those Allied troops who for two years and a half had borne 
the heat and burden of the greatest war in history. On June 13, 
General John J. Pershing, who had been designated to command 
the projected American Expeditionary Force abroad, arrived in 
Paris, and the first contingent of American troops reached France 
on June 25. The first American shots from European trenches 
were fired on October 27, and the first trench fighting of Ameri- 
cans occurred a week later. By December, 191 7, about 250,000 
American troops had been safely landed in France ; and towards 
the end of January, 1918, the War Department at Washington 
let it be known that United States soldiers were occupying front- 
line trenches "in a certain sector." 

Against American preparations the German submarine war- 
fare made little headway. It is true that during the first year 
of unrestricted submarine warfare, ending January 31, 19 18, 
some sixty-nine American vessels, representing a gross tonnage 
of 170,000, were sunk by submarines, mines, or raiders. On the 
other hand, it should be remembered that enemy merchant ships 
were seized by the United States to the number of 107, with an 
aggregate tonnage of nearly 700,000, and that many of these 
former German and Austrian liners were promptly repaired and 
used to carry American troops and supplies to France. Besides, 
the United States Government inaugurated a shipbuilding pro- 
gram of huge dimensions, so that by the first anniversary of 
America's participation in the war the United States had put in 
commission 1275 vessels of every sort of service — mine-sweep- 
ing, mine-laying, transport, patrol, and submarine-chasing. By 



224 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the same date the personnel of the American navy had grown from 
its original number of 4800 officers and 102,000 men to 20,600 
officers and 330,000 men, and the navy itself with great speed and 
small loss was conducting the most amazing ferrying business on 
record. 

Before the spring of 191 8 had rolled around, the problem of 
American preparedness was solved, and it was solved in manner 
wholly disconcerting to the Teutons. At the beginning of 191 7 
Germany had, with mad imprecations, unloosed the ruthless sub- 
marines in order to bring Great Britain to terms. At the close 
of 191 7, despite the submarines and the fierce invectives of Ger- 
many, Great Britain was still resolutely hostile. Nay, more, 
at the close of 191 7, because of those same submarines and in- 
vectives, the United States was an active associate of the Entente, 
pouring out to Britain and France and Italy vast streams of food 
and minerals and treasures and, most startling of all, her own 
man power. Verily it was a new stage of the Great War which 
the intervention of the United States marked, and one ominous 
to Germany's vaulting ambitions and likewise to any perpetu- 
ation of international anarchy. 



CHAPTER XI 

RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 

DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY: THE MARCH 
(1917) REVOLUTION 

Autocracy of the Russian variety proved itself absolutely- 
unfit to meet the supreme test of the Great War. Such was 
its corruption and inefficiency that rather early in the struggle 
Russia had lost to the foreign foe more men and more territory 
than any other Great Power. And such was the obtuseness of 
the Russian autocracy that it would learn no lesson from military 
defeat and would brook no honest criticism of its own conduct. 
In fact, as time went on, the court and the bureaucracy appeared 
to think less and less of how to defeat Germany and more and 
more of how to ward off domestic revolution. 

Throughout the winter of 1916-1917 popular disaffection 
overspread Russia. Army officers complained of the lack of 
governmental energy in prosecuting the war. The middle classes 
complained of absurd governmental restrictions on trade and 
industry. Landlords complained of silly governmental restric- 
tions on the export of grain from one district to another. Peasants 
groaned under an intolerable system of economic and political 
abuses. Workingmen in the towns suffered from a shortage 
of food and a general paralysis of business. Against the bureau- 
cracy were arrayed all popular bodies — the Union of Zemstvos, 
the Union of Municipalities, the War Industries Committee, 
the Imperial Duma, and even the conservative Council of the 
Empire. In Petrograd and Moscow, strike followed strike. 

Yet the autocracy adhered to its traditions of secrecy, sus- 
picion, repression, and intrigue. The Tsar Nicholas II himself 
was naturally clement and well-meaning, but he was hopelessly 
dominated by his wife, the Tsarina-Alexandra Feodorovna; 
and this ambitious and neurotic woman surrounded herself with 
fools and hypocrites and charlatans, phfef among whom was the 
notorious Gregory Rasputin. Raspujan, a curious compound 
of shrewd peasant, avaricious politician, erotic maniac, and re- 

Q 225 

A 



* 



226 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

ligious fanatic, acted as official "medicine man" to a super- 
stitious court and gave tone and character to the blind, perverse 
autocracy. Rasputin was said, on good authority, to have been 
responsible for the dismissal of the Grand Duke Nicholas from 
supreme command of the Russian armies in 191 5; certainly 
Rasputin was a friend of the reactionary premiers Goremykin 
and Sturmer, of the traitorous War Secretary Soukhomlinov, and 
especially of Protopopov, the generally hated and feared minister 
of the interior. 

In November, 1916, the Duma had held a stormy session, but 
its attacks on the administration had produced no important 
results. Boris Sturmer, it is true, had been replaced in the 
premiership by Alexander Trepov, but Trepov was either un- 
willing or unable to persuade the Tsar to dismiss Protopopov or 
to break the spell of Rasputin. To the popular Russian mind 
it was becoming ever more patent that court circles were con- 
trolled by "dark influences" and that any premier acceptable 
to the court, whether a Sturmer or a Trepov, was capable of 
betraying the country to the Germans if thereby autocracy 
might be strengthened in Russia. To the confirmed bureaucrats 
the Romanov dynasty seemed to have much more in common 
with the dynasties of the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs than 
with the democracies of France and Great Britain. Treason 
to the Allied cause was becoming the highest object of states- 
manship on the part of the Russian Government. At the same 
time the Russian Government was pursuing such an unpopular 
course that its domestic enemies openly charged it with aiming 
to provoke a futile rebellion, to suppress the rebellion by force, 
to quell by terrorism any agitation for reform, and to intrench 
Russian autocracy anew in power for another century. 

Under these circumstances a conspiracy was formed by several 
prominent Russian liberals against Rasputin, and at the end of 
December, 1916, the sinister monk was assassinated. The 
popular rejoicing which greeted the news of this bloody deed 
was unmistakable proof of the wide divergence of the sentiments 
and feelings of the nation from those of the court. But still 
the court was deaf, dumb, and blind to popular feelings. Ras- 
putin dead exercised upon the mind of the Tsarina — and, 
through her, upon the Tsar — even a greater influence than when 
he was alive. Though Trepov was dismissed from the premier- 
ship he was replaced by Prince Golitzin, a typical bureaucrat 
of compressed brains and elastic conscience. And while Prince 
Golitzin kept postponing the assembling of the Duma through- 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 227 

out January and February, 1917, the fanatical Protopopov, 
with a superabundance of misplaced energy, was suppressing 
newspapers, breaking up meetings, and filling the prisons with 
political offenders and suspects. 

In the meantime many Russian people were hungry. The 
winter of 1916-1917 was bitterly cold, with heavy snowfalls; 
and, although there was enough grain in Russia, if properly 
distributed, to satisfy all, nevertheless the enormous demands 
of the army strained the transport machinery to its utmost, 
and a situation naturally bad was rendered incalculably worse 
by the mismanagement and corruption of the Government. At 
the very time when bread lines were becoming a daily occurrence 
in the larger cities and when the Government appeared to have 
no remedy for the food shortage, the Duma at last reassembled 
in Petrograd on February 27, 1917, — amid bodyguards of 
Protopopov's police. 

Thus it happened that early in March the national representa- 
tives in the Duma assailed the Government more vehemently 
than ever, while in Petrograd the workers went on a strike and 
participated in street demonstrations and riots. No concession, 
however, was forthcoming. The Government was plainly de- 
termined to overawe workers and parliamentarians alike. On 
Sunday, March n, Prince Golitzin formally prorogued the 
Duma, and the military governor of Petrograd solemnly ordered 
the strikers to keep the peace and return to work. But the 
workers simply refused to obey, and the Duma declined to be 
prorogued, declaring that it was now the sole constitutional au- 
thority in Russia. The supreme test of Russian autocracy had 
come. Could the Government enforce its will? 

To enforce its will the Government must command the loyalty 
and obedience, not only of the police, but also of the soldiers, and 
it was a disquieting symptom that some soldiers in Petrograd 
when directed on March n to fire on the crowd had mutinied. 
On that evening a Committee of Workmen set itself up in the 
city with the twofold purpose of organizing the lower classes 
for revolutionary purposes and of winning the soldiers to their 
cause; it was intent upon destroying autocracy, root and 
branch, and building some sort of radical republic. At once it 
obtained a great influence over the troops pouring into Petrograd. 

The activities and threats of the Petrograd workingmen 
alarmed the more moderate Duma and made the parliamentary 
leaders all the more anxious to wring speedy and sweeping con- 
cessions from the Government. On the evening of March n, 



228 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Rodzianko, the conservative president of the Duma, telegraphed 
the Tsar: "The situation is grave. Anarchy reigns in the 
capital. The transport of provisions and fuel is completely- 
disorganized. General dissatisfaction is growing. Irregular 
rifle-firing is occurring in the streets. It is necessary to charge 
immediately some persons enjoying the confidence of the people 
to form a new government. It is impossible to linger. Any 
delay means death. Let us pray to God that the responsibility 
in this hour will not fall upon a crowned head." 

The next day — March 12 — was decisive. The bulk of the 
troops, both the Petrograd garrison and the reinforcements 
brought into the city, responded to the appeals of the Council 
of Workmen's Deputies and engaged in free-for-all fights with 
their officers and with the police. In the afternoon the great 
prison fortress of Saint Peter and Saint Paul surrendered to the 
revolutionaries ; and with the fall of the Bastille of the old 
regime, the organs of autocracy ceased to function. Some of 
the old bureaucrats were arrested ; others made their escape. 

So far the revolution was confined to Petrograd, and there 
was much uncertainty both in the Duma and in the Council of 
Workmen's Deputies as to whether the Tsar could or would turn 
his huge field armies against the capital. Attempts of the Tsar 
and of General Ivanov to reach Petrograd were frustrated by 
revolutionary railway-employees, who for two critical days wil- 
fully sidetracked or blocked their trains. Meanwhile the armies 
of Brussilov and Ruzsky declared their adherence to the Revolu- 
tion, and at Moscow and other important places in the interior 
of the empire similar declarations were made. The Russian 
autocracy of the Romanovs and of the bureaucrats collapsed 
universally and suddenly. 

As a result of negotiations between leaders of the Duma and 
the Council of Workmen's Deputies at Petrograd — now styled 
the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, or Soviet — ■ 
Professor Milyukov, the chief of the Constitutional Democratic 
party in the Duma, was able to announce on the afternoon of 
March 1 5 that an agreement had been reached : that it had 
been decided to depose the Tsar, to constitute immediately a 
provisional government composed of representatives of all 
parties and groups, and to arrange for the convocation of a 
Constituent Assembly at an early date to determine the form of 
a permanent democratic government for Russia. Earlier on 
the same day, the Tsar had been waited upon in his railway 
train at Pskov and his abdication had been counseled by Rod- 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 229 

zianko, Alexeiev, Brussilov, Ruzsky, and the Grand Duke 
Nicholas. There was only one thing for the well-meaning, weak- 
kneed Nicholas II to do and that was to abdicate. Abdicate 
he did in graceful language and in deep emotion ; and, hoping 
against hope that at least the dynasty might be saved, he ab- 
dicated in favor of his brother, the Grand Duke Michael. 

The Grand Duke Michael dared not essay to play the imperial 
role. On March 16, the day after his brother's abdication, he 
issued a statement in which he said : 

"This heavy responsibility has come to me at the voluntary 
request of my brother, who has transferred the imperial throne 
to me during a period of warfare which is accompanied by un- 
precedented popular disturbances. Moved by the thought, 
which is in the minds of the entire people, that the good of the 
country is paramount, I have adopted the firm resolution to 
accept the supreme power only if this be the will of our great 
people, who, by a plebiscite organized by their representatives 
in a Constituent Assembly, shall establish a form of government 
and new fundamental laws for the Russian state. 

"Consequently, invoking the benediction of our Lord, I urge 
all citizens of Russia to submit to the Provisional Government, 
established upon the initiative of the Duma and invested with 
full plenary powers, until such time which will follow with as 
little delay as possible, as the Constituent Assembly, on a basis 
of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage, shall, by its de- 
cision as to the new form of government, express the will of the 
people." 

It is not likely that the Grand Duke Michael entertained any 
idea that he would ever become the Tsar of All the Russias by 
vote of a Constituent Assembly or otherwise. He must have 
known, what the revolutionaries now thoroughly understood, 
that the Romanov dynasty was permanently retired to private 
life and that the autocracy which it had enshrined for three 
centuries and the bureaucracy with which it had been served 
were henceforth forever doomed. 

The Provisional Government, as organized on March 15, 
191 7, consisted of a ministry selected from, and responsible to, 
the Duma. It represented a coalition of the parties and groups 
of the Center and Left Center, and was essentially bourgeois 
and respectable. The popular elements throughout the country, 
on which it counted most, were the professional classes, business 
men, and country gentlemen. Its head, at once premier and 
minister of the interior, was Prince George Lvov, president of 



230 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the Union of Zemztvos, member of the Constitutional Demo- 
cratic Party, a specialist in local government, and an eminently 
practical man. The important ministry of war and marine 
was assigned to Guchkov, a moderate conservative of the Octo- 
brist faction ; that of finance, to Terestchenko, a wealthy em- 
ployer and a sort of Tory democrat ; that of justice, to Alexander 
Kerensky, a leader of the radical peasant party — the so-called 
Socialist Revolutionaries, — easily the most radical member 
of the new government ; and the ministries of foreign affairs 
and agriculture, respectively to Professor Milyukov and to 
Shingarev, both doctrinaire liberals belonging to the Constitu- 
tional Democratic Party. Altogether in the Provisional Gov- 
ernment there were eight Constitutional Democrats, three 
Octobrists, and one Socialist Revolutionary. 

By the end of March, 191 7, the Russian Revolution was an 
accomplished fact. The autocracy had fallen. The Tsar had 
been deposed. The bureaucrats were in prison or in exile. The 
Provisional Government, representing a coalition of the liberal 
groups of the Duma and championing a thoroughly democratic 
regime for revolutionized Russia, had been accorded formal 
recognition by the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, 
and Japan, and had apparently obtained the support of the vast 
majority of Russian people. Already thousands of political 
prisoners had been liberated and brought back from Siberia. 
Freedom of association, of the press, and of religion had been 
proclaimed. Finland had been given back her constitution 
(March 20). And on March 30 the Provisional Government 
declared: "The Polish nation, liberated and unified, will settle 
for itself the nature of its own government, expressing its will 
by means of a Constituent Assembly convoked on the basis of 
universal suffrage in the capital of Poland." Not only was the 
autocracy dead, but its policies were being reversed as rapidly 
as possible. 

What promised to assure the permanence of democratic 
Russia was the speedy acceptance of the Revolution by the 
principal army generals. Alexeiev, as generalissimo ; Ruzsky, 
commander of the northern army group ; Brussilov, commander 
of the southern army group ; Kornilov, in command of the 
Petrograd garrison, — all swore loyalty to the Provisional Govern- 
ment. Only General Ewarts, commander of the central army 
group, opposed the new regime; and there was no difficulty in 
replacing him with General Gourko, an able soldier and a friend 
of the Revolution. The attitude of these generals promised 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 231 

even more than the permanence of democratic Russia ; it prom- 
ised the continued participation of Russia in the Great War and 
the heartiest and most effective cooperation of Russia with her 
sister democracies of France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United 
States, against the menace of Teuton imperialism. There was 
gayety in Russia. There was rejoicing and there was feting of the 
Russian Revolution in Rome, in Paris, in London, in New York, 
and in San Francisco. There was despair in old Russian court 
circles, as temporarily there was gloom in Vienna and in Berlin. 

DISINTEGRATION OF DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL AND MILI- 
TARY EXPERIMENTS 

To expect the transformation of Russia, within a month, 
from autocracy to democracy was to believe in miracles and 
magic. Russia was a huge, heterogeneous empire, in which 
national ambitions of Finns, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians, Ukrain- 
ians, Jews, and Georgians were bound to interfere with the suc- 
cessful operation of democratic institutions, if not to constitute 
disruptive forces. Russia, moreover, was politically and eco- 
nomically the most backward country in Europe ; unlike the 
peoples of France and Great Britain, the population of the 
Russian Empire had had no thorough training or long experience 
in political democracy; unlike the democracies of western Eu- 
rope, the Russian revolutionary government would have to base 
itself less upon an electorate of educated bourgeois and prosperous 
inedpendent farmers than upon a mass of illiterate, poverty- 
stricken peasants and upon noisy groups of ill-disciplined urban 
workers. For a democratic harvest in Russia, neither the field 
was favorable nor the seed fertile. 

For many years "government" in the abstract had meant 
to the bulk of the Russian people the concrete government of 
the tsars ; and the protracted popular protests and agitations 
against the tsars' autocracy and bureaucracy had bred in the 
Russian masses a natural repugnance to government in general 
rather than any particular devotion to untried democracy. 
Consequently, when the Revolution occurred in March, 191 7, 
and the government of the Tsar ceased to function, Russia be- 
came "democratic" only in the minds of the Duma leaders and 
other Russian doctrinaires and of foreigners. What Russia 
really became was anarchical. Extreme individualism sup- 
planted despotism. The collective duties and responsibilities 
of freedom were quite lost sight of in the frenzied joy of individual 



232 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

emancipation. Enthusiasm was centered in blind destruction 
of the old rather than in farsighted construction of the new. 
Liberty was truly license. 

Like children the Russian people utilized their newly won 
freedom. In large numbers they stopped work and took holi- 
days. They talked and harangued. In the country districts 
they withheld rents and taxes. In the towns they destroyed 
machinery and drove out employers and inspectors. In the 
army the common soldiers proceeded to choose their own officers 
and to debate plans of campaign. The police were gone, and 
the armies were rapidly degenerating into chaos. 

No single authority gained the assent of the Russian people 
at large. The Provisional Government of Prince Lvov claimed 
sole authority, but it really represented only certain middle- 
class groups in a Duma which had been elected by a very re- 
stricted suffrage under the auspices of the discredited and fallen 
autocracy. More representative of the bulk of the Russian 
people than the bourgeois Provisional Government were the 
extra-legal Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peasants' 
Deputies, which, following the example of the Petrograd workers, 
hastily sprang up throughout the length and breadth of the 
country and even in the army. The Soviets were organized 
locally, on something like a town-meeting basis, and they un- 
doubtedly performed very important services in satisfying vital 
local needs and in spreading and applying the principles of the 
revolution locally. But the Soviets were too numerous, too 
diverse, and too irresponsible to admit of unification and of 
effective direction of constructive policies for all Russia. Be- 
sides, the Soviets, being dominated largely by Socialist Revo- 
lutionaries and Social Democrats, were out of sympathy with 
the more moderate parties of Constitutional Democrats and 
Octobrists which controlled the Provisional Government. The 
latter were seemingly content to interpret the March Revolution 
merely as a political change from autocracy to middle-class 
political democracy, while the former were intent upon pushing 
it further so that all the institutions of the old regime — social 
as well as political — would be utterly annihilated. The Soviets 
acted on the supposition that the overthrowing of the Romanovs 
should be the signal for economic and social changes so radical 
as to make the political program of the Provisional Government 
appear paltry and ridiculous. The Soviets distrusted the Pro- 
visional Government, and the Provisional Government feared 
the Soviets. 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 233 

It was on the question of war aims that the first significant 
cleavage appeared between the Provisional Government and 
the Soviets. Milyukov, the minister of foreign affairs, and 
Guchkov, the war minister, were particularly zealous imperial- 
ists ; they prevailed upon the Provisional Government to cham- 
pion most of the traditional foreign policies of the old autocracy 

— a strongly unified Russian state, a close secret alliance with 
France, ambitious designs on Constantinople and Armenia, 
and an unyielding attitude toward Rumania and the Balkan 
states. On the other hand, the Soviets reflected the war weari- 
ness of the Russian masses. Russia had already suffered more 
serious losses than any other Great Power ; and the Russian 
people were sick and tired of a struggle into which they had 
blindly been led by the Tsar and whose stakes had been less the 
preservation of Russia from German dominion than the ex- 
tension of Russian imperialism and the aggrandizement of the 
autocratic regime. Now that the Tsar was deposed, the ma- 
jority of the Russian people felt instinctively that all his policies 

— foreign as well as domestic — were discredited, and that the 
political revolution should carry with it a revolution in war 
aims. "Self-determination" was now the all-important ob- 
jective of the Russians ; it should be the common objective of 
all the belligerent nations. Hitherto the Great War had been 
a struggle between governing classes of different countries for 
imperialistic purposes ; henceforth it must be a popular con- 
test for the assurance of self-determination, and of that kind 
of self-determination expressed in the simple formula "no an- 
nexations and no indemnities." 

Such was the purport of resolutions adopted by the first All- 
Russian Congress of Soviets, which met in Moscow on April 13, 
191 7. The delegates, it is true, declared themselves in favor 
of the continuation of the war, provided it was waged on their 
terms, and expressed themselves as willing to exclude from the 
formula of "no annexations and no indemnities" the questions 
of Belgium, Poland, Serbia, and Armenia. But in all other 
respects they insisted upon their principles and demanded the 
assent of the Allies to their formula. 

There was little likelihood of Allied acceptance of the demands 
of the Russian Soviets. For if peradventure they should be 
accepted, Italy and Japan would gain absolutely nothing from 
the war; France would have to renounce Alsace-Lorraine for- 
ever^ and Great Britain would still be confronted by a German 
Fmpire mighty in resources, in colonies, in industry, and in 



234 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

shipping. Nor were the Soviets' demands attractive to the 
Russian Foreign Minister Milyukov, who had set his heart on 
strict adherence to the secret treaties negotiated by the Tsar's 
Government with the several Entente Powers and who hoped 
thereby to win for democratic Russia the rich prize of Con- 
stantinople, which for centuries had been fondly contended for 
by autocratic Russia. Accordingly, early in May, 191 7, 
Milyukov addressed a joint note to the Allied Governments, 
proclaiming the firm resolution of Russia to conclude no separate 
peace with the Central Empires, but to carry the war to a vic- 
torious conclusion in conformity with Russia's past engagements. 

Milyukov's note was as distasteful to the Soviets as it was 
pleasing to the Allies. The Soviets were plainly annoyed. 
There were open demonstrations against the Foreign Minister. 
There were mutinous outbreaks in the army. On May 13, 
Guchkov resigned as minister of war and navy, and Milyukov 
soon followed him into retirement. The Provisional Govern- 
ment of Prince Lvov was breaking down. Real power was 
passing rapidly from the middle classes to the workers and 
peasants, from the Duma to the Soviets. 

The swing of the revolutionary pendulum toward social radi- 
calism was registered in the reconstruction of Prince Lvov's 
Provisional Government, on May 16, 1917. This reconstruction 
was largely the work of Tcheidze, a Social Democrat and the 
commanding figure in the Petrograd Soviet, and Alexander 
Kerensky, the only member of the first Provisional Government 
who sympathized fully with the aims of the Soviets. In the 
new ministry, Kerensky himself became minister of war and 
navy ; Tchernov, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, 
took the portfolio of agriculture ; another Socialist Revolutionary 
succeeded Kerensky as minister of justice ; Social Democrats, 
Skobelev and Tseretelli, became ministers respectively of labor 
and of posts and telegraphs. Although the moderate Con- 
stitutional Democratic Party was allowed to retain the portfolio 
of foreign affairs, the new incumbent, Terestchenko, was not 
such a zealous imperialist as Milyukov. Altogether, in the 
reconstructed Provisional Government, there were seven Con- 
stitutional Democrats, two Octobrists, three Socialist Revolu- 
tionaries, and three Social Democrats. The Soviets now had 
several able representatives in the Provisional Government. 

On the crucial question of war aims, a manifesto, drafted in 
conference between the ministry and the Soviets, was issued 
three days after the reconstruction of the Provisional Govern- 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 235 

ment: "The Provisional Government, reorganized and re- 
enforced by representatives of the Revolutionary Democracy, 
declares that it will energetically carry into effect the ideas of 
liberty, equality, and fraternity, beneath the standards of which 
the great Russian Revolution came to birth. ... In its foreign 
policy the Provisional Government, rejecting, in concert with 
the entire people, all thought of a separate peace, adopts openly 
as its aim the reestablishment of a general peace which shall 
not tend towards domination over other nations or the seizure 
of their national possessions or the violent usurpation of their 
territories — a peace without annexations or indemnities and 
based on the right of nations to decide their own affairs. In 
the firm conviction that the fall of the regime of Tsardom in 
Russia and the consolidation of democratic principles in our 
internal and external policy will create in the Allied democracies 
new aspirations towards a stable peace and the brotherhood of 
nations, the Provisional Government will take steps towards 
bringing about a new agreement with the Allies. . . ." 

The new Government grappled with the prodigious problems 
of reconstructing and regenerating Russia with determination 
and pluck. Energetic efforts were made to put manufacturing 
plants again in operation, to get the peasants to augment their 
crops, and to improve the transport system. To secure the 
assistance of foreign capital and of foreign technical advisers, 
as well as to enlighten the Russian people about the theories 
and practices of political democracy, especially its duties and 
responsibilities, foreign missions were welcomed and afforded 
every opportunity to travel and to lecture throughout the 
country ; and eloquent were the appeals addressed to the Russian 
people by the American mission under Elihu Root, the French 
under Albert Thomas, the Belgian under Emile Vandervelde, 
and the British under Arthur Henderson. 

Meanwhile the Government was negotiating with the Entente 
Powers for the summoning of an Inter-Allied Conference which 
should revise the past secret treaties in harmony with the Russian 
manifesto of May 19; and at the same time, Kerensky, with 
fiery enthusiasm, was exerting himself to the utmost to restore 
some discipline in the army and to prepare Russia for a re- 
sumption of the offensive against Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

It was an impossible task. The Allied Governments cer- 
tainly applauded the deposition of the Tsar and wished the 
revolutionaries well, but for the present they were naturally 
far more concerned that Russia should give full military assistance 



236 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

to their war aims than that Russia should set her own house 
in order. The Allies, intent upon winning the war, feared lest 
the Russians should become so absorbed in developing their 
revolution and in effecting radical social readjustments at home 
as to lose interest in the war abroad. The Russian people, on 
the other hand, felt quite as naturally that for the present the 
completion of their own domestic revolution was infinitely more 
important than the prosecution of the foreign war along lines 
determined by bourgeois statesmen in Paris, London, and Rome ; 
they could not comprehend why, if the Allies were sincere in 
their good wishes for the Russian Revolution, favorable response 
was not immediately forthcoming to the request for a radical 
revision of war aims ; they began to distrust the political de- 
mocracies of western Europe, and to imagine that France, Italy, 
and Great Britain were addicted, almost as much as Germany 
and Austria-Hungary, to the vice of greedy imperialism. A 
fissure was appearing in the rock of Entente solidarity. The 
Russian people were perceptibly separating from the other 
Allied nations. 

Anxiously the Government of Prince Lvov sought to prevent 
the fissure from becoming a chasm. They tried to explain to 
the Russian people that so long as Germany was undefeated the 
Revolution was not safe. They attempted to make clear to 
the Allies that until the Revolution was assured Russia could 
not give her chief attention to the defeat of Germany. The 
more they urged the Allies to adopt a conciliatory peace program 
the more fearful grew the Allies of radical socialistic tendencies 
in Russia. The more the Provisional Government begged the 
Russian people to continue the war at any cost, the more un- 
popular they became in Russia and the more susceptible were 
the Russians to radical socialistic and pacifistic propaganda. 

The relation of revolutionized Russia to the Entente was only 
one aspect of the insoluble problem before the Provisional 
Government. The Provisional Government itself was es- 
sentially unstable ; it comprised representatives of a shadowy 
Duma which had ceased to function and of informal and ir- 
regular Soviets which were in state of constant flux ; it embraced 
leaders of such diverse and naturally quarrelsome parties as 
the bourgeois Octobrist and Constitutional Democratic, the 
peasants' Socialist Revolutionary, and the proletarian Social 
Democratic ; it was a compromise, and as a compromise it 
pleased no strict partisans. By virtue of its composite personnel, 
the Provisional Government could not hope to carry out any 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 237 

consistent policy of political or social reconstruction. Yet 
thoroughgoing reconstruction was what Russia most needed. 

Reconstruction of the vast Russian Empire, with its divergent 
nationalities, its illiterate masses, its extremes of poverty and 
affluence, and its long record of political corruption and tyranny 
under the scepter of the tsars, would have been enormously 
difficult in normal times of peace. It was rendered well-nigh 
impossible in 191 7 by reason of the fact that Russia was a party 
to the greatest war in human annals and was peculiarly open 
to five forms of insidious propaganda. 

In the first place, there was the propaganda of reactionary 
elements in Russia. At first these elements were confined pretty 
much to the bureaucrats of the old regime and to certain dis- 
gruntled landlords and manufacturers ; and their propaganda, 
beginning under Sturmer and Protopopov, was directed toward 
peace with the Central Empires, to the end that the autocracy 
might be restored and likewise the social distinctions and privi- 
leges of the old regime. These elements were not numerous or 
outspoken, but they had wealth and a talent for intrigue. 

Secondly, there was the propaganda of those Russians who, 
while supporting the Revolution in its earliest stages, denounced 
subsequent developments as evil or inexpedient. The more 
radical the Provisional Government became and the more it 
catered to the social demands of the Soviets, the noisier and more 
numerous grew these conservative revolutionaries, until by 
June, 191 7, they included not only the Nationalists but im- 
portant groups of Octobrists and Constitutional Democrats. 
They were still too few to dominate the country or any con- 
siderable part of it, but they were sufficiently brilliant and 
eloquent to embarrass the Provisional Government. They in- 
sisted upon war at any price and denounced the attempts of the 
Government to obtain a restatement of Allied war-aims. They 
misled the Allies into thinking that they represented the Russian 
people ; and their propaganda did much to give the Allies false 
hopes and the masses in Russia groundless alarms. Uncon- 
sciously and indirectly they contributed potently to widening 
the breach between Russia and the Allied democracies. 

Thirdly, there was a movement of various lesser nationalities 
within the Russian Empire toward political independence or 
autonomy. Poles and Finns were determined to utilize the 
destruction of the tsardom in order to free themselves entirely 
from union with Russia. In April, 191 7, a congress of Little 
Russians (Ruthenians) met at Kiev and demanded complete 



238 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

autonomy for a Ukrainia which should reach from the Pripet 
River on the north to the Black Sea and Kuban River on the 
south and from the Don on the east to the Dniester and Bug 
on the west. In July a national assembly of Esthonians met at 
Reval and formed a provisional government. In August a 
conference of the Letts of Courland and Livonia, convened in 
Riga, demanded "a united, politically autonomous Lettland 
(Latvia) within the Russian Republic." Similar demands were 
made by Lithuanians and by Georgians of the Caucasus. And 
all these national committees and "provisional governments" 
engaged actively in propaganda which threatened to disrupt the 
Russian Empire not only, but tc stimulate the counter-agitation 
of Russian conservatives and to serve the cause of Germany. 

Fourthly, there was out-and-out German propaganda. Be- 
fore the Revolution a goodly number of German agents had been 
at work in Russia intriguing with old-regime bureaucrats for a 
separate peace. After the Revolution the unsettled political 
and social conditions in Russia enabled the Teutons to widen 
and deepen their efforts to secure by intrigue what they had 
failed to obtain by force of arms. The German agents were 
now all things to all Russians. To reactionaries, they were 
apostles of a counter-revolution which could be achieved only 
by the cessation of war. To extreme revolutionaries, they were 
devotees of the doctrine that the revolution could be completed 
only if the existing Provisional Government, which sought to 
continue the war, were overthrown. The separatist propaganda 
among the lesser nationalities within Russia they aided and 
abetted. But principally they devoted their energies to under- 
mining the morale of the Russian field-armies. With the fall of 
autocracy, discipline in the Russian armies rapidly declined ; 
privates left the ranks and went home without leave ; officers 
who tried to do their duty were arrested by the men ; fighting 
ceased ; and Russian and German soldiers began to fraternize. 
Taking advantage of this situation, German agents went about 
in the Russian lines trying to persuade the troops to demand a 
separate peace or at least an armistice. The French and British 
were accused of the grossest imperialism and of a desire needlessly 
to prolong the carnage and bloodshed in order to further their 
own selfish ambitions ; and the Teutons were represented as 
angelic victims of the jealousy and greed of others and as con- 
firmed friends of a just and durable peace. The German agents 
insisted that the Central Empires were willing and anxious to 
conclude peace but that the Entente was not. 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 239 

Finally, most directly menacing to the unity and permanence 
of the Provisional Government was the propaganda of the 
Russian revolutionaries of the extreme Left. These ultra- 
revolutionaries assailed the members of the Socialist Revolu- 
tionary and Social Democratic parties who had accepted port- 
folios in a "bourgeois" government, charging them with 
sacrificing the social revolution to the political exigencies of 
war. Gradually, by means of this kind of propaganda, a con- 
siderable number of revolutionary peasants were weaned away 
from the leadership of Tchernov and Kerensky, and a large 
proportion of urban workers transferred their loyalty from 
Tseretelli and Tcheidze to still more radical Social Democrats. 
Gradually many Soviets passed from moderate Socialism to 
extreme Socialism. And the leaders of extreme Socialism in 
Russia stood quite outside of organized government ; they were 
as anxious to rid Russia of Prince Lvov's provisional middle- 
class democracy as they were to have done once and for all with 
the Tsar Nicholas's divine-right autocracy. 

Russian Socialism in the twentieth century comprised two 
major movements. The one, essentially indigenous, extolled 
Russian national customs and aimed at expropriating great 
landowners and establishing a kind of peasant proprietorship 
with cooperative features ; it appealed to the agricultural lower 
classes and was crystallized into the Socialist Revolutionary 
Party. The other, an imported product, took its faith and works 
from Karl Marx and his doctrinaire disciples in western Europe ; 
it emphasized the "class-struggle," the eventually inevitable 
rout of capitalism by a class-conscious proletariat, and all the 
other tenets of international Socialism ; it spread among urban 
workers and found expression in the Social Democratic Party. 

But the Social Democratic Party, since its second congress, 
in 1903, had been divided into two wings, the Bolsheviki, or 
"majority," and the Mensheviki, or "minority." At first the 
two wings differed merely on matters of party organization, but 
in course of time their separation and mutual antagonism were 
increased by divergent views as to party tactics. The Bolsheviki 
cherished the strict Marxist precepts, including the idea that 
the Socialist state of the future would be ushered in by an over- 
whelming cataclysm, sudden, proletarian, and international. 
The Mensheviki, on the other hand, were "reformist," in the 
sense in which that word was used in Germany and France; 
they believed that Russia could be Socialized only through the 
cooperation of Social Democrats with other radicals, through 



240 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

gradual political and economic reforms, and through the slow 
education of the masses. In practice the Mensheviki were the 
moderates, and the Bolsheviki the extremists. Despite the fact 
that the extremists constituted a minority of Russian Socialists, 
the appellation of Bolsheviki, or "majority," still stuck to them. 

In the reconstructed Provisional Government of Prince Lvov, 
the Socialist Revolutionaries had three representatives including 
Tchernov and Kerensky, and the Mensheviki had three. The 
Bolsheviki, alone of the Socialist groups, were not represented ; 
they were too extreme for the comfort and safety of the moderate 
revolutionaries, and besides, their strict principles forbade them 
to accept office in a "bourgeois" government even if they were 
invited. Relieved of all responsibility of dealing with the actual 
problems then confronting the Provisional Government, the 
Bolsheviki were free to make the most bitter attacks upon the 
government and at the same time to make the most extravagant 
promises to ignorant workers and peasants concerning the 
millennium which they would inaugurate if they had the chance. 
For conducting this highly subversive and destructive propa- 
ganda the Bolsheviki had two remarkable leaders and agitators 
in Lenin and Trotsky. 

Vladimir Ulyanov, better known under his pen-name of 
Nikolai Lenin, belonged by birth and training to the Russian 
nobility, but as a young man he had become a revolutionary 
and in 1899 had published an important book on "The Develop- 
ment of Capitalism in Russia." A doctrinaire Socialist of the 
most dogmatic type, he had lived in exile in Switzerland almost 
continuously from 1900 until the Revolution of March, 191 7, 
when the German Government permitted him to return to Russia. 
He accepted German assistance and German gold, but he had 
as little love for the Hohenzollerns as for the Romanovs. 

Leon Trotsky, a Moscow Jew whose name was really Bronstein, 
belonged to the middle class. Becoming a radical socialist, 
he had been imprisoned for political offenses and transported to 
Siberia. Escaping thence, he had lived several years in Vienna 
and in Paris. Expelled from France in 1916, he arrived in New 
York in the following January, but in May managed to reach 
Russia. 

The Bolshevist program of Lenin and Trotsky in the spring 
of 1917 was as follows: (1) the Soviets of Workmen, Soldiers, 
and Peasants, to constitute themselves the actual revolutionary 
government and exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat; 
(2) immediate confiscation of landed estates without compensa- 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 241 

tion and without waiting for legal forms, the peasants organizing 
into Soviets ; (3) control of production and distribution by the 
revolutionary government, nationalization of monopolies, and 
repudiation of the national debt ; (4) the workmen to take 
possession of factories and operate them in conjunction with 
technical experts ; (5) refusal by the Soviets to recognize any 
treaties made by the governments either of the Tsar or of the 
bourgeoisie, and the immediate publication of all such treaties ; 
(6) the workers to propose at once and publicly an immediate 
armistice, and negotiations for peace to be carried out by the 
proletariat and not by the bourgeoisie ; and (7) bourgeois war 
debts to be paid exclusively by the capitalists. Lenin himself 
proposed further "that universal, equal, direct, and secret 
suffrage be frankly abandoned, and that only the industrial 
proletariat and the poorest section of the peasantry be permitted 
to vote at all." 

In repudiating political democracy and in demanding im- 
mediate peace, the Bolsheviki arrayed themselves squarely 
against the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries as well as 
against the bourgeois parties. Manifestly the whole Provisional 
Government was menaced by Bolshevist propaganda. 

In June, the All-Russia Congress of Soviets assembled in 
Petrograd under the presidency of the Menshevist leader 
Tcheidze. A furious attack by Lenin on the Coalition Govern- 
ment, especially on Kerensky, was successfully answered by 
Tseretelli and other Mensheviki, and for the time being the 
moderates, the friends of law and order, triumphed. Late in 
June an attempted uprising of Bolsheviki in Petrograd fell flat. 
Apparently there was still a large measure of popular faith in 
the Provisional Government. 

The Provisional Government was staking everything on the 
outcome of the military measures which at that very time it 
was taking. Kerensky, the war minister, had reached the con- 
clusion that an advance of the Russian armies against the 
Teutons, even if trifling in itself, would do incalculable good to 
the Provisional Government by offsetting subversive propaganda 
alike of the Germans and of the Bolsheviki, by reenforcing the 
faith of the Allies in the Revolution, and by reinvigorating the 
morale of Russia both military and civilian. 

Supreme efforts were put forth by Kerensky in June to prepare 
the Russian field-armies for a resumption of the offensive. With 
his burning eyes and hoarse voice and with restless energy the 
war-minister visited the several commands at the front and went 



242 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

among the common soldiers, urging upon all the paramount 
duty of acting loyally together and of lighting the Teutons to 
the last ditch. Supplies and reinforcements were rushed up, 
and important changes were made in the General Staff. Generals 
Alexeiev and Gourko were dismissed because of their increasingly 
unsympathetic attitude toward Kerensky, and were succeeded 
respectively as generalissimo and commander of the central 
army group by Generals Brussilov and Denikin. 

At this time the Teutonic armies on the Eastern Front em- 
braced three groups: (i) the northern group, under Prince 
Leopold of Bavaria, extending from the Baltic to a point just 
south of Brzezany; (2) the central group, under Archduke 
Joseph Frederick, extending thence to the Rumanian frontier; 
and (3) the southern group, under Field Marshal von Mackensen, 
arrayed against the Russo-Rumanians along the Sereth. It 
was against the right wing of the northern group, under Boehm- 
Ermolli, and the left wing of the central group, under Count 
Bothmer, that General Brussilov, the new Russian Chief of 
Staff, decided to launch the offensive. He would seize Brzezany, 
Halicz, and Stryj, and thence advance on Lemberg. 

Russian artillery preparations began in the early morning of 
June 29, 191 7, and on July 1, the infantry leaped from their 
trenches and charged the Teutons. To the southeast of Lemberg 
unexpected success crowned the Russian offensive. The Lomnica 
River, the last natural defense in front of Stryj, was gallantly 
crossed ; and simultaneously with this attack south of the 
Dniester, the Russians started a drive on the Dniester itself, 
capturing Halicz on July 10. Within ten days the Russians 
had taken 50,000 prisoners and vast quantities of war material 
and had driven a wedge twenty miles long and ten miles deep 
into the Austro-German lines. But this was the high tide of 
Russian success. 

Sudden, heavy rainfall swelled the Galician streams and 
rendered them difficult to ford ; Teutonic reserves were hurried 
to threatened positions on the Eastern Front ; and in the Russian 
ranks the revolutionary lack of discipline soon received most 
painful illustration. Russian regiments in the vicinity of 
Brzezany, under General Erdelli, abandoned their posts and 
threw down their arms, and during the last week of July their 
mutinous spirit was communicated to other commands, with 
most disastrous results. The tragic facts were recorded in a 
telegram sent to Kerensky by General Erdelli : 

" A fatal crisis has occurred in the morale of the troops recently 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 243 

sent forward against the enemy. Most of the military are in a 
state of complete disorganization. Their spirit for an offensive 
has utterly disappeared ; they no longer listen to the orders of 
their leaders, and they neglect all the exhortations of their com- 
rades, even replying to them by threats and shots. Some ele- 
ments voluntarily evacuate their positions without even waiting 
for the approach of the enemy. Cases are on record in which 
an order to proceed with all haste to such and such a spot to 
assist hard-pressed comrades has been discussed for several 
hours at meetings, and the reinforcements consequently de- 
layed for several hours. . . . For a distance of several hundred 
versts long files of deserters, both armed and unarmed men, who 
are in good health and robust, but who have utterly lost all 
shame, are proceeding to the rear of the- army. Frequently 
entire units desert in this manner. . . . Orders have been 
given to-day to fire upon deserters and runaways. Let the 
Government find courage to shoot those who by their cowardice 
are selling Russia and the Revolution." 

Appeals from officers at the front and appeals from the Pro- 
visional Government could not stay the rout. The whole 
Russian line in Galicia was now in flight, and all the gains of 
191 6 were wiped out in a day. The Germans, with their Austrian 
allies, occupied Halicz, Tarnopol, Stanislau, Czernowitz, and 
Kolomea, and drove the fugitive Russians across their own border 
and entirely out of Galicia and Bukowina. General Erdelli was 
assassinated, and on August 2, 1917, Kornilov succeeded Brussilov 
in nominal command of the disorganized Russian armies. 

To the south, the Rumanians assailed Mackensen's army- 
group in order to save the Russian retreat from becoming a 
final disaster. Though unable to make much headway against 
the Austro-Germans, the Rumanians acquitted themselves 
most admirably and at least prevented Mackensen from in- 
flicting serious counter-attacks upon them. The last effort of 
the Teutons to cross the Sereth met with decisive failure on 
August 19. 

While the southern army-group of the Teutons was held in 
check at the Sereth and the central army-group rested near the 
Russo-Galician frontier, the northern group in August utilized 
Russian ^ demoralization in order to carry German invasion 
further into the Baltic Provinces. Late in August, German 
forces under General von Hutier, reached the River Aa and 
attacked at Keckau, ten miles south of Riga. On September 2, 
they cut the Dvinsk railway five miles east of the Diina River. 



244 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

On the following day the Russians evacuated Riga and the 
Germans entered in triumph. On September 23, Hutier cap- 
tured Jacobstadt, seventy miles up the Diina from Riga. In 
October, following some naval fighting, the Germans occupied 
the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga, and threatened the 
chief Russian naval-base at Reval. 

Meanwhile the fate of the Provisional Government was sealed. 
Having risked everything on a military offensive, the moderate 
Revolutionaries, in the turn of the war-tide, had lost everything. 
On one hand, the militarists and patriots redoubled their at- 
tacks upon the Government, blaming it for the destruction of 
military discipline. On the other hand, the Bolsheviki put all 
the blame upon the "militaristic" policies and ambitions of a 
Government dominated by the bourgeoisie. 

On July 17, 191 7, Prince Lvov and other Constitutional Demo- 
cratic members of the Provisional Government resigned, and on 
the same day the Bolsheviki in Petrograd, led by Lenin and 
Trotsky, attempted to seize the reins of government. The 
Bolsheviki were supported by Kronstadt sailors and by various 
disaffected elements in the garrison. But Kerensky threw him- 
self with ardor into the struggle against them, and, with the 
assistance of the Petrograd Soviet, which was still under Menshe- 
vist influence, he succeeded in putting down the insurrection. 
Kerensky, however, in his moment of victory, declined to disarm 
the workmen and dared not punish the Bolshevist leaders. On 
July 20, the war minister became head of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment and assumed a practical dictatorship. 

It was Kerensky's hope that by arranging for an early as- 
sembling of the Inter-Allied Conference, at which the war-aims 
would be restated in terms similar to those which President 
Wilson had employed, and by definitely fixing the date for elec- 
tions to a Constituent Assembly, September 30, and at the same 
time by sternly repressing the Bolsheviki, it might be possible 
to save Russia. Alexander Kerensky doubtless knew that his 
was a forlorn hope. At any rate, despite his almost super- 
human efforts, and the loyal support of the great majority of the 
Soviets, his eventual defeat was only a question of time. Day 
after day conditions grew worse. The military situation went 
rapidly from bad to worse. Finances were in chaos. Re- 
ationaries, at one extreme, and Bolsheviki, at the other, waxed 
more wroth and violent. The Allies kept postponing their 
conference and obscuring their war-aims. The separatist 
tendencies of lesser nationalities within Russia became more 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 245 

pronounced. And above all, German propaganda everywhere 
took root and flourished and bore fruit in increasing abundance. 
The Great Russian Revolution was not leading immediately 
to orderly democratic government and to more effective par- 
ticipation in the war ; rather, it was now heading straight toward 
anarchy and full confession of national defeat and disgrace. 

Late in August, an Extraordinary National Conference met 
in Moscow, representing all classes and all parties. For three 
days the great assembly debated and listened to speeches from 
leading revolutionaries : Kerensky, Tseretelli, Tcheidze, Kropot- 
kin, and Madame Breshkovskaya spoke for the workers ; Generals 
Kornilov and Kalcdinc, for the army ; and Milyukov, Guchkov, 
and others, for the bourgeoisie. Strangely enough, there was 
an apparent agreement among the great majority of the dele- 
gates on three vital points — (1) the reform of the army and the 
restoration of its discipline, (2) the continuance of the war, and 
(3) the reconciliation of party quarrels. But with most the 
first two were merely pious wishes, and the third was irony. 
The breaches had not been closed. The Radicals insisted upon 
the ultimate control of the Government by the Soviets, which 
the Moderates bitterly opposed. Three-fourths of Russia out- 
side of the Conference had no inclination for the sacrifice and 
discipline which a continuance of the war demanded. "The 
gulf between the soldiers and the dreamers had been made 
visible to all, and across it straddled Kerensky, a hopeless Colos- 
sus, who must soon make his election and leap to one side, or 
fall into the chasm." 

At first Kerensky leaned toward the soldiers. He postponed 
the elections to the National Constituent Assembly from Septem- 
ber 30 to November 25. He strengthened military discipline 
by decreeing the restoration of the death-penalty. And early 
in September he seems to have concerted plans with General 
Kornilov for the establishment of a military dictatorship. At 
any rate, Kornilov drew up a scheme for a Council of National 
Defense, with himself as president and with Kerensky as vice- 
president. 

Then suddenly Kerensky veered toward the radicals. Fearful 
of the effect of a military dictatorship, he ordered Kornilov's 
removal. Kornilov, on his side, dispatched a division of troops, 
drawn from the front, against Petrograd. This revolt was 
crushed without much trouble and with very little bloodshed, 
Kornilov being arrested and Kerensky assuming the supreme 
command of the Russian armies. 



246 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

But the Russian armies were already in process of rapid dis- 
solution. Without loyal troops no military dictator, whether a 
Kornilov or a Kerensky, could long maintain himself. In vain 
Kerensky leaned further toward the extremists. A National 
Democratic Conference convened on September 27 and con- 
tented itself with summoning a "Preliminary Parliament," 
which met on October 8 and wasted time in idle debate. Neither 
of these consultative bodies had any cohesion or dignity. All 
political groups and all social classes which had at any time sup- 
ported the Provisional Government or Kerensky, were, like the 
Russian armies, in process of disintegration. Moderate political 
democracy had failed in Russia,. Military dictatorship had 
likewise failed. 

What was left was one extreme political faction — the Bol- 
sheviki. And the Bolsheviki were resolutely determined to 
create a class-dictatorship. They were already well organized 
and now they were in a position to make capital out of the mani- 
fest failures of Lvov, Milyukov, Kornilov, and Kerensky. The 
overthrow of the political tsardom in March, 191 7, was to be sup- 
plemented in November by the destruction of Russian society. 

DICTATORSHIP OF THE BOLSHEVIKI: THE NOVEMBER 
(1917) REVOLUTION 

One of the chief reasons why Kerensky lost the support of 
the army and of the Russian people was the failure on the part 
of his Government to persuade the Allies to restate their war- 
aims in accordance with the peace formula of the Soviets. Time 
and again Kerensky had assured the Soviets that the Allies were 
about to hold a conference to revise their war-aims, but time 
and again the date of the conference had been postponed. At 
last, on November 1, Kerensky in despair served notice on the 
Allies that Russia was exhausted and that the other members 
of the Entente would thereafter have to shoulder the burden. 
Although on this occasion be added that his warning did not 
imply the withdrawal of Russia from the war, nevertheless the 
Allies took fright and announced that their long-deferred con- 
ference would be held in Paris late in November. 

But the hope that the Paris Conference would satisfy the 
longing in Russia for an early peace was not realized. Mr. 
Bonar Law, speaking in the House of Commons in behalf of 
the British Government, declared that the conference would not 
deal with "political" matters, that is, with the revision of war- 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 247 

aims, but would concern itself simply with the discussion of 
more effective means of prosecuting the war. 

This statement caused bitter disappointment in Russia and 
furnished the Bolsheviki with a potent means of completing the 
undermining of Kerensky's Government. Under Kerensky, 
they pointed out, Russia could not wage war or make peace ; 
under a dictatorship of their own, Russia could and immediately 
would make peace. And the masses of war-weary Russian peas- 
ants and workmen were now quite willing to acquiesce in any 
dictatorship, provided only that it would bring peace. To the 
ignorant masses the Bolsheviki promised peace not only, but the 
millennium besides. 

The drift of popular opinion in Russia was clearly observable 
in the new elections to the Congress of Soviets, which had been 
called to convene on November 7. Of nearly seven hundred 
delegates elected, a large majority adhered to Bolshevism. To 
be sure, certain Soviets refused to send delegates and others 
were intimidated by Bolshevist partisans. But the fact re- 
mained that for the first time, in November, 1917, the Bolsheviki 
apparently had a majority in a working-class convention. 

Already the Bolshevist Trotsky had succeeded the Menshevist 
Tcheidze in the presidency of the Petrograd Soviet. With this 
support Trotsky and his associates now set to work to prepare a 
kind of General Staff, called the Military Revolutionary Com- 
mittee, which should coordinate the Bolshevist elements in 
the army and navy and in the industrial communities and or- 
ganize bands of "Red Guards." Time seemed ripe for a Bol- 
shevist Revolution and for the establishment of the dictatorship 
of the proletariat. 

On the night of November 6, a few hours before the convoca- 
tion of the Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviki struck the de- 
cisive blow. Red Guards occupied the principal government 
buildings in Petrograd ; part of the local garrison joined them, 
the other part simply refusing to do anything. On the morn- 
ing of November 7, the members of the Provisional Govern- 
ment were placed under arrest in the Winter Palace, Kerensky 
alone managing to escape. 

On November 8, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified 
the Bolshevist coup d'etat and formally entrusted the conduct 
of affairs to a body styled the Council of People's Commissioners, 
with Lenin as premier, Trotsky as people's commissioner for 
foreign affairs, and General Krylenko as commander-in-chief 
of the armies. 



248 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Of the Bolshevist regime, two or three aspects are worthy of 
emphasis at the present time. In the first place, it was based 
on force and violence rather than upon the mandate of a popular 
majority. It originated in a coup d'etat, and it was maintained 
by methods which savored of the old Tsardom. Its enemies — 
whether reactionaries, or moderates such as Octobrists and 
Constitutional Democrats, or radicals such as Socialist Revo- 
lutionaries and Mensheviki — ■ were put under surveillance. 
Opposition newspapers were suppressed. Terrorism was in- 
voked and increasingly practiced. 

Secondly, the new regime was essentially a dictatorship in 
the interest of certain classes in the community. Its internal 
policy was directed toward effecting a complete social revolution. 
Aristocracy and bourgeoisie must go ; the rights of property 
were no longer to be respected. One of the first decrees of the 
Bolshevist Government empowered municipal authorities to 
seize any houses whether inhabited or not and to allow citizens 
who possessed no adequate dwelling to occupy them. Another 
decreed the transfer of all factories into the hands of the work- 
men. But the chief of these early measures was the decree which 
undertook to solve the land problem : private ownership being 
abolished, the land was to be nationalized and to be turned over 
to the people who cultivated it ; local committees were to dis- 
pose of all large holdings and all lands belonging to state and 
church ; mines, waterways, and forests of national importance, 
were to be expropriated by the state ; and smaller forests and 
waterways were to become the property of the village com- 
munities. 1 

Thirdly, the Bolshevist regime was not a step forward in the 
direction of political democracy, at least of "political democracy" 
as that phrase had been interpreted in western Europe, in the 
United States, and by the preceding Provisional Government of 
Russia. The Bolsheviki themselves constituted a minority — 
a very small minority — of the Russian people ; and when the 
elections to the National Constituent Assembly, which was 
conducted in November, 191 7, on the democratic basis of equal, 
direct, universal, and secret suffrage, returned a large majority 
of Socialist Revolutionaries stanchly opposed to the Bolsheviki, 
the Council of People's Commissioners became convinced that 
the only way in which it could maintain itself in power was to 

1 Subsequent decrees disestablished the Russian Church, repudiated most of the 
national debt, and transferred the seat of government from Petrograd to Moscow 
(February, 1918). 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 249 

repudiate political democracy. At first, it merely postponed the 
opening of the National Assembly from December 12, 191 7, to 
January 18, 1918. Subsequently, it charged the Assembly with 
being a counter-revolutionary body, and the Socialist Revolu- 
tionary Party with being a traitorous party "directing the fight 
of the bourgeoisie against the workers' revolution." Not only 
was the National Constituent Assembly suppressed, but local 
Soviets which could not be controlled by the Bolsheviki were 
likewise dissolved and many of their leaders were imprisoned 
or exiled. Proletarian dictatorship — not political democracy 
— was the end and aim of the Bolshevist regime. In this re- 
spect their government, strictly speaking, was not a champion of 
either Anarchism or Marxian Socialism — it represented rather an 
attempt to achieve communism by methods essentially tsar-like. 

To secure "popular" support for the "proletarian dictator- 
ship," care was taken by the Council of People's Commissioners 
to purge the Soviets of non-Bolshevists and then to federate the 
"purified" Soviets into a Congress which would faithfully 
ratify the decrees of the Council. By provision of the Con- 
stitution of the "Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic" 
the following categories were expressly denied the right to vote 
or to hold office : " (1) Persons who employ hired labor in order 
to obtain an increase of profits ; (2) Persons who have an income 
without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts 
from property, etc.; (3) Private merchants and commercial 
brokers ; (4) Monks and clergy of all denominations ; (5) Em- 
ployees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps, 
and the Tsar's secret service, also members of the former reign- 
ing dynasty; (6) Persons who have legally been declared in- 
sane or mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship ; 
and (7) Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their 
rights of citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, 
for the period fixed by the sentence." 

Furthermore the Bolshevist Government created an All- 
Russian Extraordinary Commission, which in turn created 
Provincial and District Extraordinary Commissions. These 
bodies — the local not less than the national — were empowered 
to make arrests and even to decree and carry out capital sen- 
tences. There was no appeal from their decisions ; they were 
merely required to "report afterward." From this systematic 
terrorism only professed Bolsheviki were immune. 

Whither the Bolshevist regime in Russia was tending, what 
was its goal and what were its policies, may perhaps be best 



250 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

indicated by reproducing in full the "Declaration of the Rights 
of the Toiling and Exploited People," a document which Lenin 
and Trotsky had prepared and which was presented to the 
National Constituent Assembly in January, 1918 : * 

I 

"1. Russia is to be declared a Republic of the Workmen's, 
Soldiers', and Peasants' Soviets. All power in the cities and in 
the country belongs to the Soviets. 

"2. The Russian Soviet Republic is based on the free federa- 
tion of free peoples, on the federation of national Soviet republics. 

II 

"Assuming as its duty the destruction of all exploitation of 
the workers, the complete abolition of the class system of society, 
and the placing of society upon a socialistic basis, and the ulti- 
mate bringing about of victory for Socialism in every country, 
the Constituent Assembly further decides : 

"1. That the socialization of land be realized, private owner- 
ship of land be abolished, all the land be proclaimed common 
property of the people and turned over to the toiling masses, 
without compensation, on the basis of equal right to the use of 
land ; 

" (All forests, and waters which are of social importance, as 
well as all living, and other forms of property, and all agri- 
cultural enterprises, are declared national property) ; 

" 2. To confirm the decree of the Soviets concerning the in- 
spection of working conditions, the highest department of 
national economy, which is the first step in achieving the owner- 
ship, by the Soviets, of the factories, mines, and means of pro- 
duction and transportation ; 

"3. To confirm the decree of the Soviets transferring all banks 
to the ownership of the Soviet Republic, as one of the steps in 
the freeing of the toiling masses from the yoke of capitalism ; 

"4. To enforce general compulsory labor, in order to destroy 
the class parasites, and to reorganize the economic life. 

"In order to make the power of the toiling masses secure and 
to prevent the restoration of the rule of the exploiters, the toil- 
ing masses will be armed and a Red Guard formed of workers 
and peasants, and the exploiting classes shall be disarmed. 

1 The "Declaration" was rejected by the Assembly by a large majority, but it 
was subsequently utilized as the basis of the Constitution of Bolshevist Russia. 
The document is in John Spargo, Bolshevism (1919), pp. 242 sqq. 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 251 

III 

"1. Declaring its firm determination to make society free 
from the chaos of capitalism and imperialism, which has drenched 
the country in blood in the most criminal war of all wars, the 
Constituent Assembly accepts completely the policy of the 
Soviets, whose duty it is to publish all secret treaties, to organize 
the most extensive fraternization between the workers and 
peasants of warring armies, and by revolutionary methods to 
bring about a democratic peace among the belligerent nations 
without annexations and indemnities, on the basis of the free 
self-determination of nations — at any price. 

"2. For this purpose the Constituent Assembly declares its 
complete separation from the brutal policy of the bourgeoisie, 
which furthers the well-being of the exploiters in a few selected 
nations by enslaving hundreds of millions of the toiling peoples 
of the colonies and the small nations generally. 

"The Constituent Assembly accepts the policy of the Council 
of People's Commissioners in giving complete independence to 
Finland, in beginning the withdrawal of troops from Persia, 
and in declaring for Armenia the right of self-determination. 

"A blow at international financial capital is the Soviet decree 
which annuls foreign loans made by the governments of the 
Tsar, the landowners, and the bourgeoisie. The Soviet govern- 
ment is to continue firmly on this road until final victory from 
the yoke of capitalism is won through international workers' 
revolt. 

"As the Constituent Assembly was elected on the basis of 
lists of candidates nominated before the November Revolution, 
when the people as a whole could not yet rise against their ex- 
ploiters, and did not know how powerful would be the strength 
of the exploiters in defending their privileges, and had not yet 
begun to create a Socialist society, the Constituent Assembly 
considers it, even from a formal point of view, unjust to oppose 
the Soviet power. The Constituent Assembly is of the opinion 
that at this moment, in the decisive hour of the struggle of the 
people against their exploiters, the exploiters must not have a 
seat in any government organization or institution. The power 
completely and without exception belongs to the people and 
their authorized representatives — the Workmen's, Soldiers', 
and Peasants' Soviets. 

" Supporting the Soviet rule and accepting the orders of the 
Council of People's Commissioners, the Constituent Assembly 



252 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

acknowledges its duty to outline a form for the reorganization 
of society. 

"Striving at the same time to organize a free and voluntary, 
and thereby also a complete and strong, union among the toiling 
classes of all Russian nations, the Constituent Assembly limits 
itself to outlining the basis of the federation of Russian Soviet 
Republics, leaving to the people, to the workers and soldiers, to 
decide for themselves, in their own Soviet meetings, if they are 
willing, and on what conditions they prefer, to join the federated 
government and other federations of Soviet enterprise. 

"These general principles are to be published without delay, 
and the official representatives of the Soviets are required to 
read them at the opening of the Constituent Assembly." 

DEFECTION OF RUSSIA: THE TREATY OF BREST-LITOVSK 

One of the chief reasons why the Tsar was deposed and divine- 
right autocracy came to an end in Russia in March, 191 7, was 
the inability of the old-regime government, on account of its 
corruption and inefficiency, to obtain a military victory over 
Germany. A major reason why the Provisional Government 
was overthrown and Russian political democracy was transformed 
into a proletarian dictatorship of the Bolsheviki, in November, 
191 7, was the inability of the moderate revolutionaries — Lvov 
and Kerensky — to terminate the war with a favorable peace. 
Behind both the March and the November phases of the Great 
Russian Revolution was the war weariness of vast masses of 
the Russian people. Ever since the disastrous defeats and re- 
treats of 191 5, Russian morale had steadily been declining. In 
the chaotic social and political conditions of 191 7, already 
sketched, it was destroyed utterly. 

What the Bolsheviki would do in the internal affairs of the 
Russian Empire, once they were in power, was largely con- 
jectural. What they would do in foreign policy admitted of 
no doubt whatsoever. On the first day following his advent to 
the premiership, Lenin telegraphed to all the belligerent Powers, 
proposing a three months' armistice for the discussion of peace- 
terms. Receiving no formal responses from the Allies, Trotsky, 
the Bolshevist foreign minister, then published the "secret 
treaties" which had been made among the members of the 
Entente in earlier periods of the war. According to the "secret 
treaties" Russia was to acquire the Dardanelles, Constantinople, 
the west shore of the Bosphorus, and certain defined areas in Asia 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 253 

Minor ; Arabia was to be placed under an independent Mussul- 
man government ; Russia agreed to permit France and Great Brit- 
ain to draw the western boundaries of Germany, and Russia was 
given a free hand to delimit the eastern frontiers of Germany ; 
Italy, in return for joining the Entente, was to receive the 
Trentino, southern Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia, to 
exercise a protectorate over Albania, to obtain certain con- 
cessions in Asia Minor, and to acquire additional holdings in 
Africa if France and Great Britain should increase their terri- 
torial possessions there ; and Greece, if she should join the 
Allies, was to take part of Albania and some Turkish territory 
in Asia Minor. Trotsky stated that his purpose in publishing 
these documents was to disclose to the people of all nations the 
arrangements effected by "financiers and traders through their 
parliamentary and diplomatic agents." At the same time he 
warned Germany that "when the German proletariat by means 
of revolution secures access to their chancelleries they will find 
documents which will appear in no better light." 

The publication of the secret treaties produced a deep im- 
pression on the Russian public and made it easier for the Bol- 
shevist Government to open separate peace-negotiations with 
the Teutons. Early in December, Trotsky demanded of the 
Allies that they restate their war-aims within seven days. But 
the Allies, who had not recognized the Bolshevist Government 
and who were now doubly incensed at it because it had published 
the secret treaties and because it had already suspended hos- 
tilities along the Eastern front and encouraged the fraterniza- 
tion of Russian and German troops, paid no heed to Trotsky's 
ultimatum. Whereupon, the Bolshevist Government informed 
the Russian people that the Allies would not restate their aims 
because their aims were really "imperialistic" and that there- 
fore Russia was fully justified in breaking with the Allies and in 
making immediately a separate peace with Mittel-Europa. 

Following a conference at the army headquarters of Prince 
Leopold of Bavaria, at Brest-Litovsk, attended by representa- 
tives of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bul- 
garia, an armistice between these Powers was signed on Decem- 
ber 15, 1917, providing for a truce. The Germans bound them- 
selves not to transfer troops from the Eastern to the Western 
Front. 1 

1 This engagement was not observed by the Germans. It should be noted that 
Rumania, left in the lurch by the impending Russian defection, had agreed to a 
truce with the Central Powers, at Focsani, on December 9. 



254 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

The Peace Conference itself was formally opened at Brest- 
Litovsk on Saturday, December 22, 1917. The Central Em- 
pires were represented by their respective foreign secretaries, 
Richard von Kiihlmann of Germany, and Count Czernin of 
Austria-Hungary. Both these men were personally inclined 
to be ingratiating and even magnanimous, but Kiihlmann was 
hopelessly dominated by von Ludendorff, the brusque military 
master of the Teutons, and Czernin dared not break with Klihl- 
mann. In sharp contrast to the titled and pompous dignitaries 
who represented the might of Mittel-Europa were the obscure 
envoys of revolutionary Bolshevist Russia. The latter did every- 
thing they could to ruffle the dignity of the august assembly. 
They frankly disdained diplomacy and utilized the occasion for 
spreading Socialist propaganda. 

At the opening session of the Peace Conference, the Russians 
made fifteen proposals as the bases of permanent peace : (1) evac- 
uation of all Russian territory occupied by Germany, with 
autonomy for Poland and for the Lithuanian and Lettish prov- 
inces ; (2) autonomy for Turkish Armenia ; (3) settlement of 
the Alsace-Lorraine question by a free plebiscite ; (4) restoration 
of Belgium and indemnity through an international fund for 
damages ; (5) restoration of Serbia and Montenegro, with 
similar indemnities, Serbia gaining access to the Adriatic, and 
Bosnia-Herzegovina securing complete autonomy ; (6) other 
contested Balkan territory to be temporarily autonomous, pend- 
ing plebiscites ; (7) restoration of Rumania, with autonomy for 
the Dobrudja, and with enforcement of the Berlin Convention 
of 1878 concerning equality of the Jews ; (8) autonomy for the 
Italian population of Trent and Trieste, pending a plebiscite ; 
(9) restoration of the German colonies ; (10) restoration of Persia 
and Greece; (n) neutralization of all maritime straits leading 
to inland seas, including the canals of Suez and Panama, and 
prohibition of the torpedoing of merchant vessels in time of war ; 
(12) no indemnities to be paid, and war requisitions to be re- 
turned ; (13) economic boycotts after the war to be forbidden ; 

(14) final, general peace to be negotiated at a congress composed 
of delegates chosen by the representative bodies of the several 
nations, all secret treaties being declared null and void; and 

(15) gradual disarmament on land and sea, and the substitution 
of militia for standing armies. 

With many of these proposals the delegates of Mittel-Europa 
expressed their sympathy; but on the first they immediately 
made a significant reservation. They were willing, they said, 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES " PEACE " 255 

to evacuate strictly Russian territory, but they must insist on 
their right to deal separately with Poland, Lithuania, Courland, 
and parts of Esthonia and Livonia. In other words, they were 
resolved to make such disposition of conquered portions of the 
Russian Empire as was pleasing to themselves alone. 

It soon became obvious that Teutonic policy aimed at de- 
taching various lesser nationalities from Russian allegiance and 
constituting them semi-autonomous states dependent upon 
Mittel-Europa. In this way, the federation of Mittel-Europa 
would be enormously extended eastward, and most valuable 
new resources of men, metals, and foodstuffs would be available 
to Germany for an indefinite prolongation of the Great War 
against the Powers of Western Europe and against the United 
States. In this way, too, what remained of Russia could speedily 
be brought politically and economically into the orbit of Teu- 
tonic ambition. It was a menace to the future independence 
of the whole Russian Empire ; it was a most serious threat, 
moreover, against the Entente. 

The disintegration of the Russian Empire into small republics 
was already making notable progress, thanks to the national 
chaos which accompanied and followed the Bolshevist revolution 
of November, 191 7, and thanks also to constant German propa- 
ganda which adroitly abetted the separatist tendencies of the 
smaller nationalities within the Russian Empire. The Rada, 
or parliament, of the Little Russians at Kiev proclaimed the 
independence of the "Ukrainian People's Republic" on Novem- 
ber 20, and sent representatives to Brest-Litovsk. The same 
important step was taken by Finland, which formally declared 
its independence as a republic on December 4, and was recognized 
by Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, as well as by the Central 
Empires. Lithuanian freedom from Russia was proclaimed on 
December n. The Don Cossacks, representing a reactionary 
movement against the Bolsheviki, declared a separate republic 
with Rostov as its capital and with General Paul Kaledine as 
first president and prime-minister. Separatist movements also 
developed in the Baltic Provinces of Courland, Livonia, and 
Esthonia, in the Caucasus, in Turkestan, among the Mussul- 
mans and the Tartars, and in Siberia. 

Taking advantage of a suspension of the Peace Conference, 
which had been voted in order to enable the Allies to participate 
if they should so desire, the Bolshevist Government conducted 
propaganda on its own account, with a view especially to inciting 
the German people against the "imperialistic aims" of the 



256 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Teutonic diplomatists at B rest-Li tovsk. In an official statement, 
made public on January 2, the Executive Committee of the 
Soviets declared "that the Russian Revolution remains faithful 
to the policy of internationalism. We defend the right of Po- 
land, Lithuania, and Courland (Latvia) to dispose of their own 
destiny actually and freely. Never will we recognize the justice 
of imposing the will of a foreign nation on any other nations 
whatsoever. . . . We say to the people of Germany, Austria- 
Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria: 'Under your pressure your 
Governments have been obliged to accept the motto of no an- 
nexations and no indemnities, but recently they have been trying 
to carry on their old policy of evasions. Remember, that the 
conclusion of an immediate democratic peace will depend actually 
and above all on you. All the people of Europe, exhausted and 
bled by such a war as there never was before, look to you and 
expect that you will not permit the Austro-German imperialists 
to make war against revolutionary Russia for the subjection of 
Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Armenia.'" 

The Bolsheviki were doomed to double disappointment. On 
one hand they could not prevail upon the Allies to join them in 
peace-negotiations, the Entente statesmen contenting them- 
selves with renewals of their solemn protests to Russia against 
a separate peace. On the other hand, far more significant, the 
German people seemed peculiarly impervious to Bolshevist 
propaganda ; the only occasions on which the German people 
ever appeared to doubt the all-wise and all-good character of 
their Government were when their armies met sharp reverses, 
and now, with Russia crumbling into chaos, no amount of 
Russian propaganda could shake the faith of the German masses 
in the providential guidance of Ktihlmann and Czernin. " Kame- 
rad!" was shouted by the Teuton only when he was beaten; 
when he was successful, his motto was "Woe to the vanquished ! " 

Consequently when the Peace Conference was resumed at 
Brest-Li tovsk on January 10, 1918, the Teutonic envoys cate- 
gorically refused to accede to the Russian suggestion to transfer 
the negotiations to Stockholm or to agree to the evacuation of 
occupied Russian territories. At the same time they protested 
vehemently against the efforts of the Bolshevist leaders to appeal 
to the German people over the heads of the Government's ac- 
credited representatives. The result was an impasse. And on 
January 14, the parleys at Brest-Litovsk broke up, the armistice 
having been extended to February 12, but the conference itself 
adjourning without fixing a day for reassembling. 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 257 

Fighting had already occurred in Ukrainia between partisans 
of the Bolsheviki and those of the so-called Ukrainian People's 
Republic. To the latter the Austro- Germans now gave their 
moral support. Despite the protests of Trotsky and Lenin, 
negotiations were continued throughout January between Ger- 
many, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, on one side, 
and Ukrainia, on the other, leading finally to the signature of a 
treaty on February 9, 1918, whereby southeastern Russia was 
constituted the free and independent republic of Ukrainia, 
comprising a territory of about 195,000 square miles and a popu- 
lation of about forty-five millions. 

On the following day, Trotsky, the Bolshevist foreign minister, 
served notice on all the Powers that Russia, though unable to 
sign a treaty of peace with Germany, was henceforth definitively 
out of the war. Not at peace — not at war — such was the 
remarkable import of the Russian declaration of February 10, 
1918: 

"The peace negotiations are at an end. The German capital- 
ists, bankers, and landlords, supported by the silent cooperation 
of the English and French bourgeoisie, submitted to our com- 
rades, members of the peace delegations at Brest-Litovsk, con- 
ditions such as could not be subscribed to by the Russian Revo- 
lution. 

"The Governments of Germany and Austria are in possession 
of countries and peoples vanquished by force of arms. To this 
authority the Russian people, workmen and peasants, could not 
give its acquiescence. We could not sign a peace which would 
bring with it sadness, oppression, and suffering to millions of 
workmen and peasants. 

"But we also cannot, will not, and must not continue a war 
begun by tsars and capitalists in alliance with tsars and capitalists. 
We will not and we must not continue to be at war with the Ger- 
mans and Austrians — workmen and peasants like ourselves. 

"We are not signing a peace of landlords and capitalists. 
Let the German and Austrian soldiers know who are placing 
them in the field of battle and let them know for what they are 
struggling. Let them know also that we refuse to fight against 
them. 

"Our delegation, fully conscious of its responsibility before 
the Russian people and the oppressed workers and peasants 
of other countries, declared on February 10, in the name of the 
Council of the People's Commissioners of the Government of 
the Federal Russian Republic to the Governments of the peoples 



258 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

involved in the war with us and of the neutral countries, that it 
refused to sign an annexationist treaty. Russia, for its part, 
declares the present war with Germany and Austria-Hungary, 
Turkey, and Bulgaria, at an end. 

"Simultaneously, the Russian troops received an order for 
complete demobilization on all fronts." 

This "no war, no peace" declaration of the Petrograd Govern- 
ment was received in Germany with jeers. Obviously the 
armistice was ended, but not the war. What the Teuton envoys 
had failed to achieve at Brest-Litovsk, could certainly be achieved 
by a spectacular military thrust against disorganized and de- 
mobilized Russia. So on February 18, the German armies on 
the Eastern Front were again set in motion. Rapidly they ad- 
vanced, capturing within a fortnight 7000 Russian officers, 
57,000 men, 5000 machine guns, and enormous quantities of 
munitions and supplies. Reval, Dorpat, and Narva were 
occupied ; also Pskov, Polotzk, and Borissoff ; Kiev, the capital 
of Ukrainia, was in German possession, as was almost all of 
Russia lying west of a line drawn from Narva on the Gulf of 
Finland, seventy miles west of Petrograd, to south of Kiev. 
There were now under German domination the provinces of 
Russian Poland, Lithuania, Courland, Esthonia, and Livonia, 
and a large part of Ukrainia ; the islands in the Gulf of Finland 
were later occupied. 

On February 24, the Germans, through Foreign Secretary 
Kuhlmann, announced their readiness to make a new offer of 
peace, involving new and more drastic terms than the previous 
offer, and added the condition that this offer must be accepted 
within forty-eight hours. Premier Lenin, in urging the Execu- 
tive Committee of the Soviets to accept the new peace terms, 
said, "Their knees are on our chest, and our position is hope- 
less. . . . This peace must be accepted as a respite enabling 
us to prepare a decisive resistance to the bourgeoisie and im- 
perialists. The proletariat of the whole world will come to our 
aid. Then we shall renew the fight." The Soviet Committee 
accepted the German terms on the following day, by a vote of 
112 to 84, with 22 abstentions, and peace negotiations were 
resumed at Brest-Litovsk. All the Russian envoys could do was 
to protest against Teutonic injustice — and this they did solemnly 
and vigorously. 

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on March 3, 1918, re- 
duced the huge Russian Empire practically to the size of the 
medieval Grand Duchy of Muscovy. The Bolsheviki promised 



RUSSIA REVOLTS AND MAKES "PEACE" 259 

to evacuate Ukrainia, Esthonia, Livonia, Finland, and the 
Aland islands, and to surrender the districts of Erivan, Kars, 
and Batum to the Turks. All Bolshevist propaganda was to 
be discontinued in Mitlel-Europa and in the newly ceded terri- 
tories. The unfavorable Russo-German commercial treaty of 
1904 was revived. By these terms Russia lost a fourth of her 
population, of her arable land, and of her railway system, a 
third of her manufacturing industries, and three-fourths of her 
total iron production and of her coal-fields. Russia was humbled 
in the dust, but she was at "peace." 

Rumania, completely isolated by the collapse and defection 
of Russia, felt obliged to sign a peace-treaty with the four Powers 
of MUtel-Europa, at Bucharest, on March 7. By this humiliating 
Treaty of Bucharest, 1 Rumania agreed to give up all Dobrudja, 
the Petroseny coal basin, and the Carpathian passes, and to 
promote Austro-German trade through Moldavia and Bessarabia 
to Odessa on the Black Sea. Subsequently the Central Empires 
consented to the incorporation of Bessarabia into Rumania, 
which had been voted by a Bessarabian council on March 27. 

On March 7, a peace-treaty was concluded between Finland 
and Germany, whereby the latter recognized the independence 
of the former. 2 A week later the German landlords of Cour- 
land, meeting at Mittau, were inspired to petition for a union 
of the "freed" Baltic Provinces under the crown of the "House 
of Hohenzollern " ; and the emotional William II, stirred to 
his very heart-depths, wired "God's blessing on your land, upon 
which German fidelity, German courage, and German perse- 
verance have made their impress." Everything seemed to be 
progressing as auspiciously for Germany as unhappily for Russia. 
Intrigues were being steadily prosecuted to secure scions of 
princely German families as popular candidates for the new 
thrones which had been rendered desirable and needful by Teu- 
tonic military prowess in the East — in Finland, in the Baltic 
Provinces, in Lithuania, in Ukrainia, and in Poland. What a 
mighty Mittel-Europa was in process of construction ! Against 
the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, the Governments 
of Great Britain, France, and Italy formally protested on March 
18, 1918. 

The defection of Russia from the cause of the democratic 

1 This treaty was ratified by the German Bundesrat on June 4, by the Rumanian 
Chamber on June 28, and by the Rumanian Senate on July 4. 

2 A treaty of amity between the "Finnish Social Republic of Workmen " and 
the "Russian Federal Soviet Republic" had been signed on March 1, 1918. Peace 
between Finland and Austria-Hungary was concluded at Vienna on May 29. 



260 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Entente Allies should not be blamed upon the Revolution or 
even upon the mischievous and short-sighted Bolsheviki so much 
as upon the old tsardom whose tyranny and corruption had 
made revolution necessary and temporary excessive radicalism 
natural. For the time being, the defection of Russia was cer- 
tainly a source of bitter disappointment to France, Great Britain, 
Italy, and the United States ; and the formal repudiation of 
the Russian foreign debt in February, 1918, served to accentuate 
the bitterness felt in Allied countries. Yet the Russians them- 
selves were doomed to suffer more and worse from the Bolshevist 
regime than were any foreign peoples. And, as events were to 
prove, entry of the United States into the Great War in 191 7 
was ample compensation to the Allies for the disintegration and 
defection of Russia. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ALLIES PAVE THE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 
ALLIED PLANS AND PROSPECTS IN 1917 

The Great War entered a peculiarly critical stage in 191 7. 
In the preceding year the Teutons and the Allies had failed in 
turn to obtain military decisions. On the one hand, the Allies 
had been unable to recover any appreciable portion of territories 
formerly lost to them or to prevent the humiliation and subjuga- 
tion of Rumania. On the other hand, the Teutons had failed 
to capture Verdun or Vicenza, or to weaken the hostile resolu- 
tion of any of the Great Powers arrayed against them. It was 
obvious that the Great War was a tremendous endurance-test; 
and, as had been pointed out repeatedly, such an endurance- 
test was less promising, in the long run, to the Teutons than to 
the Allies. 

Early in 191 7, however, the resumption of unrestricted subma- 
rine warfare by Germany and the resulting entrance of the 
United States into the war on the side of the Allies served to 
emphasize one aspect of the endurance-test to the exclusion of 
others. The question then was whether the United States 
Government, in the face of the threat of the wholesale destruc- 
tion and paralysis of Allied shipping by German submarines, 
would and could transport sufficient troops and supplies to 
Europe to tip the balance of military power in favor of the En- 
tente. As we have already seen, this question was in a fair 
way toward an answer by the second half of 191 7 : ruthless 
submarine warfare, though terribly destructive in the first 
half of the year and still menacing, was now distinctly on the 
decline; American foodstuffs, munitions, and other materiel 
were flowing in streams to Britain, France, and Italy ; and it 
was apparent that a large American Expeditionary Force, 
well trained and well equipped, would be ready to take the field 
in 191 8 alongside the seasoned veterans of the Allies. The 
unrestricted submarine warfare of the Germans was not accom- 
plishing its purpose, and this aspect of the great endurance- 

261 



262 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

test between the Allies and the Central Empires was becoming 
monthly more favorable to the former and less advantageous 
to the latter. If only Russia could continue to press against 
the extended Austro-German lines from the Sereth to the Baltic, 
while the French and British forced offensives on the Western 
Front, and the Italians on the Isonzo and the Carso, and General 
Sarrail's motley hosts in Macedonia, it would be but a question 
of time when Mittel-Europa must break and crumble. 

But the situation in 191 7 was not so simple. For at the very 
time when the Great War appeared to assume the character of 
a speed-contest between German preparations for ruthless war- 
fare on the high seas and American preparations for large-scale 
campaigning on the Continent of Europe, one of the Great 
Entente Powers — Russia — began to revolt and to upset many 
Allied calculations. The Russian Revolution introduced a 
new and important element of uncertainty into the endurance- 
test which the Great War had become. 

In its earliest phases the Russian Revolution seemed to be an 
asset to the Allied cause. The destruction of autocracy in Russia 
was acclaimed in Paris, in London, in Rome, and in Washington, 
as putting an end once for all to dangerous intrigues between 
the courts of Petrograd and Berlin, as removing a too well-merited 
reproach of Teutonic sympathizers and apologists, and as com- 
pleting the alignment of democratic nations against the oligarchial 
and militaristic states of Mittel-Europa. Thereby the political 
stakes of the Great War were clarified and point was given to 
President Wilson's celebrated phrase that the aim of the Allies 
was "to make the world safe for democracy." 

If any confirmation were needed of the new democratic enthu- 
siasm which overspread all the Entente Powers, it was provided 
by a radical electoral reform in Great Britain, the bill for which, 
introduced in the House of Commons on May 15, 191 7, and 
passed in December, provided for the equal, direct suffrage of 
all adult males and of most adult females. Great Britain not 
only was adopting thoroughgoing democracy in the old sense 
but was playing the role of pioneer among the Great Powers of 
the world in the grant of the parliamentary franchise to women. 
Moreover, Lloyd George, the British premier, announced in 
May, 191 7, that his Government was prepared to recognize the 
national aspirations of Ireland by offering to the Irish people a 
choice between the acceptance of immediate home rule for all 
parts of the island, except the six counties of Ulster, and the 
convocation of a constituent assembly which should represent 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 263 

all factions and all faiths. The Irish Nationalists chose the 
latter; and from July to December, 1917, an Irish Conven- 
tion was in session endeavoring to draft a constitution for the 
country. 1 

High hopes were aroused in the Entente countries that the 
Russian Revolution would occasion serious internal disorders 
in the Central Empires. And events in the spring and summer 
of 191 7 did not altogether belie these hopes. Austria-Hungary 
was already in ferment, and the democratic and nationalistic 
revolutions elsewhere brought into bold relief the glaring political 
inequalities in the Dual Monarchy. In Austria itself, it should 
be remembered, some ten million Germans dominated some 
eighteen million Slavs — Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), 
and Jugoslavs (Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs), — while in Hun- 
gary some ten million Magyars tyrannized over some ten million 
Rumans, Slovaks, and Jugoslavs. Only the Germans of Austria 
and the Magyars of Hungary accepted loyally the Prussian 
hegemony in Mittel-Europa, and these dominant minority ele- 
ments encountered ever greater difficulties in dealing with the 
majority nationalities subject to them. There were frequent 
conspiracies and executions of civilians, and mutinies of troops. 
The Czechs of Austria and the Slovaks of Hungary — consti- 
tuting in reality the single Czechoslovak nationality — were 
on the verge of armed rebellion. The Slovenes, Croats, and 
Serbs were becoming more conscious of their community of 
race and interest with the peoples of Serbia and Montenegro 
and were agitating in favor of separation from Austria and 
Hungary and creation of an autonomous Jugoslavia. The 
Rumans of Hungarian Transylvania were advocating union 
with the kingdom of Rumania, and the Poles of Austrian Galicia 
were demanding union with a free and independent Poland. 
The Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, affected by the establishment 
of an autonomous Ukrainia by their kinsfolk in Russia, were 
hostile alike to the Poles and to the German Austrians. The 
hodge-podge of nationalities within the Dual Monarchy raised 
problems perplexing enough at any time, but now, in the face 
of the Russian Revolution, doubly perplexing. 

The Emperor Charles, who had succeeded the aged Francis 
Joseph in November, 191 6, was reputed to be sincerely desirous 
of undertaking a radical reformation of his ramshackle domin- 
ions. It was gossiped that he planned to transform the Dual 

1 The Report of the Irish Convention was published in April, 1018, but was not 
acted upon by the British Government. See below, pp. 310-312. 



264 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Monarchy into a Quintuple Monarchy of which the constituent 
states would be Austria, Hungary, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, 
and Poland. At any rate he had intrusted the important posts 
of Austrian premier 1 and minister of foreign affairs in December, 
1916, respectively to Count Clam-Martinitz and to Count 
Ottokar Czernin, two Germanized Czechs, who intrigued deli- 
cately and spoke many fair words. But the task was too ardu- 
ous for Czernin, Clam-Martinitz, or Charles. Any concession 
to Czechs or Poles angered the Germans, and any strengthening 
of the dominant position of the Germans exasperated the sub- 
ject nationalities. 

So long as an overwhelming majority of Austrian subjects 
were bitterly hostile to the existing political regime, democracy 
could exist in Austria only in name ; and it was a notorious fact 
that the Austrian parliament — the Reichsrat — had not been 
convoked since the outbreak of the Great War in July, 1914. 
Now, however, after the Russian Revolution, the Emperor and 
his ministers had to prove at home and abroad that Austria 
was democratic in fact as well as in theory ; and thus it happened 
that the Reichsrat, after a vacation of three years, was convened 
in Vienna in May, 191 7. No sooner had the Reichsrat met 
than the Czech and the Jugoslav deputies demanded the abolition 
of the dual system and the grant of independence and unity 
to their respective nations. Unable to coerce or cajole these 
deputies, Clam-Martinitz turned his attention to the Poles. 
If the Polish deputies could be prevailed upon to support him, 
they with the German Austrians would constitute a majority 
of the Reichsrat capable of demonstrating the regularity and 
orderliness of democratic government in Austria. But the 
Poles claimed more favors than Clam-Martinitz could grant 
and still retain the confidence of the German Austrians. To 
the Polish demand for a united, independent Poland, including 
Galicia and access to the Baltic, Clam-Martinitz ventured to 
give only rambling and non-committal answers ; and on June 
16, 1917, the Polish deputies resolved to join the Czechs and 
Jugoslavs in voting against the budget. At the same time the 
National Council of the Czechs prepared and issued a formal 
indictment of the Habsburg Monarchy, accusing it of having 
brought on the war without the consent of the Czech deputies 

1 The Austrian premier since 191 1, Count Karl Stiirgkh, had been assassinated 
on October 21, 1916, by a Socialist editor. From October to December, a 
stop-gap ministry had been presided over by Ernst von Koerber, a zealous Pan- 
German, who had been finance minister of the Dual Monarchy since February, 
1915- 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 265 

or of the Czech nation, of having shot Czech soldiers in masses, 
interned hundreds of Czech civilians, and condemned Czech 
deputies to death or imprisonment, of having suppressed or 
gagged the Czech press, of having involved the Czech communi- 
ties in ruin, and of having "spent more than sixty billions on a 
criminal war." Furthermore, on July 20, 191 7, the head of the 
Jugoslav party, Dr. Anton Trumbitch, signed with Nikola 
Pashitch, the premier of Serbia, the famous Declaration of 
Corfu, whereby it was agreed to constitute an independent, 
unified state of the five million Serbs of Serbia and Montenegro 
and the seven million Jugoslav (Serb, Croat, and Slovene) 
subjects of Austria-Hungary ; in the proposed state all religions 
would be on an equal footing, the Gregorian calendar would be 
adopted, and suffrage would be universal, secret, equal, and 
direct. 

Uncomfortably oppressed by the sensation of an ominous 
rumbling that might betoken the nearness of earthquake and 
volcanic eruptions, Count Clam-Martinitz retired from the 
Austrian premiership late in June as gracefully as the circum- 
stances would warrant. Dr. von Seidler, a typical bureaucrat, 
then formed a stop-gap ministry, dissolved the Reichsrat, and 
awaited developments. 

Superficially the situation in Hungary was less critical. Count 
Tisza, who had been in office since 191 3 and had had a hand in 
precipitating the Great War, was forced out of the premiership, 
it is true, in May, 191 7, but he was forced out by fellow-Magyar 
aristocrats rather than by non-Magyar nationalists. And 
so accustomed to domination were the titled Magyars that they 
experienced no serious difficulty in refusing popular demands 
for much-needed constitutional reform and in exalting one of 
their own number, Count Julius Andrassy, to succeed Count 
Tisza. 

Nevertheless, below the surface, there was seething discontent 
in Hungary. And Austria, as we have seen, was on the verge 
of revolution. Instinctively the Emperor Charles and Count 
Czernin, his suave foreign minister, felt that the Dual Monarchy 
could be saved and its complicated nationalistic problems safely 
dealt with, not by indefinite prolongation of the war, but by 
speedy ^ conclusion of peace. The result was that throughout 
the spring and summer of 191 7 Czernin and Charles were intrigu- 
ing with the Allies, especially with France, for the termination 
of the war. Charles went so far as to state to the French Gov- 
ernment through a confidential intermediary, — his cousin, 



266 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Prince Sixtus of Bourbon, — that Austria-Hungary would sup- 
port "France's just claim relative to Alsace-Lorraine." 1 

That Austria-Hungary was longing ardently for peace and was 
weakening in her attachment to Germany was no secret in the 
midsummer of 191 7. And so long as there was open to the Allies 
the prospect of detaching the Dual Monarchy from Mittcl- 
Europa, British and French diplomatists evinced a remarkable 
charity and kindliness toward the Habsburg Estate. The 
United States, though at war with Germany since April, 191 7, 
did not declare war against Austria-Hungary until the following 
December. 

The Russian Revolution occasioned political crises not only 
in Austria-Hungary, but also in Germany ; and any event which 
divided German counsels and weakened German morale was of 
obvious advantage to the Allies, for Germany was the brain and 
sinew of MiUel-Eiiropa. In January, 191 7, before the upheaval 
in Russia, the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, had 
seemingly won the enthusiastic approbation of the bulk of the 
German people in espousing the Pan-German policy of ruth- 
less submarine warfare. But as time went on and the Russian 
Colossus was perceived to have feet of clay and the submarine 
warfare did not bring a speedy suit for peace from the Allies, a 
growing reaction against Bethmann-Hollweg and his Govern- 
ment was observable in Germany. With the Great War about 
to enter upon its fourth year, even the most militaristic nation 
could not wholly escape the general war weariness which affected 
all the other belligerents. In particular, there were political 
groups in Germany, such as the Socialists, the Catholic Centrists, 
the Radicals (Progressives), and the Poles, which had always 
been by tradition and circumstance hostile to the imperial regime, 
and which, though supporting the Emperor and his Chancellor 
so long as autocratic Russia made common cause with democratic 
France in arms against the integrity of the Fatherland, were 
now prepared to qualify their support. 

These Moderates in Germany were affected not only by the 
Russian Revolution directly, which removed an important part 
of the "Slavic Peril," but also by the papal appeals for peace, 
by the troubles and tribulations then brewing in Austria-Hun- 
gary, by the eloquent appeals of President Wilson to the German 
people against the German autocracy, and by the plain talking 

1 The exposure of this Austrian duplicity in April, 1918, led to the resignation 
of Count Czernin, and to the restoration of Baron Burian to the Austro-Hungarian 
ministry of foreign affairs, which had been held by him from January, 1915, to 
December, 1916. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 267 

of foreign Socialists to Scheidemann and other German Socialist 
leaders at an international conference in Stockholm in June. 
In vain did Bethmann-Hollweg endeavor to conciliate the Cen- 
trists and Poles by securing the repeal of the law against the 
Jesuits and of the law forbidding the use of any language other 
than German at public meetings. Such liberal sops did not 
satisfy the real hunger of German liberals. 

On July 6, 191 7, a serious crisis was precipitated in Germany 
by Mathias Erzberger, a conspicuous leader of the left wing of 
the Catholic Center Party, who in a speech before the Main 
Committee of the Reichstag assailed the Government with the 
utmost candor and vehemence, criticising the conduct of the war, 
especially the use of the submarines, and demanding radical 
reforms in both domestic and foreign policy and a declaration 
in favor of peace according to the formula of revolutionary Russia 
— without annexations or indemnities. Straightway the Cen- 
trists, Socialists, Radicals, and a sprinkling of National Liberals 
formed an anti-Government bloc, comprising a large majority 
of the total membership of the Reichstag and pledged to uphold 
democratic amendment of the Prussian Constitution, introduc- 
tion of parliamentary government in the Empire, and a declara- 
tion of war aims on lines laid down by Erzberger. 

To accept the demands of the new bloc meant the alienation 
of all the Conservatives and of a majority of the National Liberals 
from the Government, and this meant a signal reverse for the 
war party and perhaps an open confession of national defeat. 
Bethmann-Hollweg, who had been chancellor continuously 
since 1909 and as such had played a most significant part in 
preparing for. the present war, in precipitating it, and in assum- 
ing responsibility for its conduct, could not bring himself to 
cooperate with the bloc; after a week's disorder in the Reichstag, 
Emperor William II received and accepted, on July 14, 191 7, 
the resignation of Bethmann-Hollweg. 

Five days later the unruly Reichstag, against the strenuous 
protests of Tirpitz, Reventlow, and all other fiery pan-Germans, 
passed by a majority of more than one hundred a remarkable 
peace resolution, that the object of the war was solely to defend 
the liberty, independence, and territorial integrity of Germany, 
that the Reichstag championed peace and understanding between 
the belligerents, and that annexations and political and economic 
oppression were contrary to such a peace. Thereby did a large 
majority of the duly elected representatives of the German 
nation put themselves squarely on record as opposed to the 



268 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

war aims of the Kaiser, the militarists, the Junkers, and the 
industrial magnates. 

So used was the Reichstag, however, to limiting itself to 
words, that in this crisis it had no single opinion as to what 
legal methods it should employ to give effect to its resolution 
and no courage to transcend the constitution and proclaim a 
revolution. Fearful of their own vocal audacity, the leaders of 
the bloc hesitated to invoke violence, and in hesitating they were 
lost. The Emperor took no notice of the peace resolution and 
calmly ignored the Reichstag in appointing Dr. George Michaelis 
as successor to Bethmann-Hollweg. 

Michaelis was a typical Prussian bureaucrat, sixty years old, 
docile, and safe, of Conservative sentiments and sympathies, 
who was known to the public almost exclusively by his recent 
record as a fairly competent Food Administrator. Under Chan- 
cellor Michaelis, Helfferich became vice chancellor and minister 
of the interior, and Kuhlmann succeeded Zimmermann as foreign 
minister. Michaelis was no intellectual giant, but he was clever 
enough to befool the credulous bloc leaders in the Reichstag. 
He declared himself ready to accept the peace resolution of 
July 19, "as he understood it," announced that he would take 
matters of political reform "under consideration," and sent the 
Reichstag home with a benediction. 

Throughout August and September, Michaelis with the aid of 
the more adroit Kuhlmann continued openly to profess his love 
for peace while stealthily he abetted the propaganda actively 
conducted by Pan-Germans in favor of the repudiation of the 
Reichstag's peace resolution. It was hard for Michaelis, bungler 
as he was, to labor for a German victory through peace, when 
the simpler and more straightforward Conservatives could only 
think of peace through a German victory. When, in October, 
the Reichstag reassembled, it was in an electrical atmosphere. 
The submarine warfare was failing. There were grave disorders, 
even mutinies, in the fleet. The Independent Socialists were 
growing more troublesome. The Conservatives and National 
Liberals were annoyed that the Chancellor did not break com- 
pletely with the Reichstag. The Centrists, Socialists, and 
Radicals were furious that the Chancellor should give only lip- 
service to their program of reform and their declaration of 
war aims. 

Delay on the part of the Reichstag in voting war credits and 
attacks of the bloc leaders upon the Chancellor for his blunders 
and shiftiness were sufficient to precipitate a second political 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 269 

crisis in Germany. On October 21, 1917, Michaelis resigned; 
and ten days later — the four hundredth anniversary of the 
posting of Luther's theses upon the church-door at Wittenberg 
— the Emperor designated as chancellor and minister-president 
of Prussia the Catholic leader Count Hertling. Count Hertling, 
a Bavarian by birth and latterly premier of his native state, 
had spent most of his seventy-four years as professor at Bonn ; 
he was a prominent member of the Center Party, a devout 
Catholic, a profound student of philosophy, and a skillful parlia- 
mentarian. His advent to the highest civil office in the Empire 
and in Prussia was hailed at first as a signal triumph for the 
Reichstag bloc and as a happy augury of a democratic reaction 
in Germany against militaristic autocracy. Hcrtling's pro- 
gram, elaborated in conference with the party leaders in the 
Reichstag, included promises to carry out sweeping electoral 
reforms in Prussia, to abolish or relax the political censorship 
and the state of siege, and to direct peace negotiations in har- 
mony with the resolution of July. 

Only a week after Hertling's elevation to a leading position 
in Germany occurred the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia (No- 
vember 7, 191 7), which definitely deprived the Entente of one 
of its most important members and at the same time put a stop, 
at least temporarily, to the popular unrest and disquiet in Ger- 
many and in Austria-Hungary. The Allies soon received full 
confirmation of their fears that the Russian Revolution, as it 
progressed, was becoming a liability, rather than an asset, to 
their cause. Bolshevist Russia was concluding first an armistice 
and then a separate peace with the Central Empires. Rumania, 
left isolated and defenseless, was obliged to surrender. The 
Teutons were organizing a series of dependent states out of the 
wreckage in eastern Europe — a Finland, a Lettland (Latvia), 
a Lithuania, a Poland, and a Ukrainia. On all of these states 
as well as on what remained of Russia, Mittel-Europa was 
strengthening her political and economic hold. She was prepar- 
ing to draw from them vast stores of foodstuffs and war materiel. 
She would be able before long to do away entirely with her 
Eastern Front and to bring all her fighting strength to bear 
on France, on Italy, and on Salonica. No wonder that Dr. 
Seidler, the Austrian premier who had taken office in June in 
fear and trembling, breathed quite easily in December. No 
wonder that Count Hertling, the German Chancellor who had 
appeared in October as a harbinger of democracy and early 
peace, was transformed by the rapid course of events into an 



270 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

exponent of domestic conservation and foreign annexation. The 
immediate prospects of Mittel-Eiiropa were too alluring to a 
Seidler and a Hertling. They were compelling to a Czernin 
and a Kiihlmann. They were satisfying even to the Teutonic 
military chieftains — to Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Mack- 
ensen. The sceptical Emperor Charles was silenced, and the 
grandiloquent Emperor William burst forth in hysterical paeans 
to the Almighty. 

Still the Allies had no reason to despair of ultimate victory. 
With the Russian autocracy gone, their cause was now unques- 
tionably the cause of democracy and civilization, and as such 
it had a popular appeal infinitely more enthusiastic than that 
of Mittel-Eiiropa. Even with the defection of all Russia from 
the alliance of free nations, the Entente was superior to the 
Central Empires in man-power and in munitions and supplies 
Besides, the political and economic conditions in Bolshevist 
Russia were so chaotic that the Teutons could not hope to organ- 
ize and utilize its natural resources in the near future ; and in 
the meantime the full strength of the United States would be 
available to the Allies. Moreover, the dependent states on which 
the Teutons had counted for grateful and timely assistance 
soon displayed signs of putting their own welfare above that of 
Mittel-Europa, and some of them, notably Poland and Ukrainia, 
fell to quarreling violently with each other, to the scandal and 
chagrin of Vienna and Berlin. At the worst for the Allies, the 
Russian Revolution merely injected a new element into the 
endurance-test which the Great War had become ; it simply 
postponed the ultimate victory of the Allies. 

Less and less throughout the year 191 7 did the purpose of the 
Allies appear to be merely the chastisement of Germany and 
the parceling out of conquered territories ; more and more it 
became the fashioning of a league of free nations which should 
preserve a peace of justice and put an end to anarchy — to the 
rule of force — in international relations. More and more the 
whole world awoke to an understanding of the real stakes of the 
Great War, and nation after nation entered the struggle on the 
side of the Allies. The four Powers of Mittel-Europa — Ger- 
many, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria — remained 
alone in 191 7 as they had in 19 15. On the other hand, the 
Entente, though suffering the defection of Russia and of Rumania 
in 191 7, could now count not only upon the former members — 
France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Monte- 
negro, and Portugal, — but also upon a considerable number 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 271 

of fresh associates. The United States joined the Allies in April, 
speedily followed by Cuba and Panama. China severed diplo- 
matic relations with Germany on March 14 ; and then after 
the suppression of a royalist uprising, the reconstructed republi- 
can government under President Feng Kwo-Cheng declared 
war on the Central Empires on August 14. Brazil, after sever- 
ing diplomatic relations in April, formally went to war with 
Germany on October 26. Siam declared war on the Central 
Empires on July 22. Liberia declared war on Germany on 
August 4. Greece, as we shall see in a subsequent section of this 
chapter, united with the Allies on July 2. 

Several states showed clearly their sympathies in the struggle 
by severing diplomatic relations with Germany, though they 
did not formally declare war. Such were Bolivia, Costa Rica, 
Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Santo 
Domingo, and Uruguay. 1 Feeling ran high in Argentina against 
the German submarine ruthlessness, especially when it became 
known that Count Luxburg, the German charge at Buenos 
Aires, had telegraphed his government in May that if Argentine 
vessels were destroyed, it should be done "without a trace being 
left" ("spurlosversenkt") ; and only a profuse apology from Ger- 
many and a formal promise not to sink any more Argentine 
ships, together with an unpopular insistence on the part of the 
Argentine president, kept Argentina out of the war. Altogether, 
at the close of 19 18, approximately half the sovereign states of 
the world (and these by far the richest and most populous) 
were banded together in a sort of league against the four Powers 
of Germanized Mitt el-Euro pa. 

The better to coordinate their military operations, the prime 
ministers and chiefs of staff of France, Great Britain, and Italy 
conferred at Rapallo on November 9, 191 7, and agreed to create 
a Supreme War Council, the organization and functions of which 
were set forth as follows: "The Supreme War Council is com- 
posed of the prime minister and one other member of the govern- 
ment of each of the Great Powers whose armies are fighting on 
the Western Front ; it is to supervise the general conduct of the 
war ; it prepares recommendations for the consideration of the 
governments and keeps itself informed of their execution and 
reports thereon to the several governments." The first act 
of the Supreme War Council was the appointment of an Inter- 

1 Subsequently, in 1918, Costa Rica (May 23), Guatemala (April 22), Haiti 
(July 1 5), Honduras (July 19), and Nicaragua (May 24) declared war against 
Germany. 



272 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Allied General Staff, consisting of Generals Foch (France), 
Wilson (Great Britain), and Cadorna (Italy). Early in Decem- 
ber an Inter- Allied Naval Board was created by the Supreme 
War Council. It was obvious that at last the Allies were becom- 
ing convinced of the imperative need of unity of counsel and 
unity of action. 

At the end of November, 191 7, the long deferred Allied Con- 
ference met at Paris. Delegates were present from France, 
Great Britain, Italy, the United States, and all the other allied 
and associated states, except Russia, which was then in the midst 
of negotiations with Germany for an armistice. No detailed 
statement was made of the plans formulated, but it was indicated 
that satisfactory agreements had been reached whereby a uni- 
fied and vigorous prosecution of the war was made possible. 

Allied prospects should have seemed bright. Russia, it is 
true, was deserting the Allies, but the United States was coming 
to take Russia's place. The ruthless submarine warfare was 
weakening. There were signs of unrest and discomfort within 
the Central Empires. The Allies were clarifying their war-aims, 
husbanding their resources, and effecting a unity of purposes 
and methods. As we shall discover in the next two sections of 
this chapter, the Allies in 191 7 were likewise gaining noteworthy 
advantages in the fighting on the Western Front and were recov- 
ering much of their prestige in the Near East. 

THE LESSON OF THE HINDENBURG LINE 

On the Western Front the year 191 7 marked the first significant 
retirement of the Germans since the battle of the Marne in 1914, 
and it also marked noteworthy progress in the war of attrition. 
The Anglo-French offensive on the Somme in the autumn of 
1916 had failed to reach its chief objectives, — the towns of 
Bapaume and Peronne, — but it had caused the enemy many 
casualties and had badly dented his line ; it had created an 
awkward salient for him between Arras and Saillisel and an 
even greater salient hardly less difficult between Arras and the 
Aisne. Continued pressure of the British in the valley of the 
Ancre throughout January and February of 191 7, increased the 
awkwardness of the smaller German salient and endangered 
Bapaume. 

Early in March, 1917, it became apparent that the German 
General Staff was planning to evacuate not only the salient 
between Arras and Saillisel but the larger salient between Arras 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 273 

and the Aisne. For some time Field Marshal von Hindenburg, 
the German Chief of Staff, had been directing the preparation 
of an exceptionally strong defense system of trenches, officially 
styled the "Siegfried Line" but subsequently called by the 
Allies the "Hindenburg Line," branching off from the old posi- 
tion near Arras and thence running in a relatively straight line 
southeastward through Queant and west of Cambrai, St. Quentin, 
and La Fere, to the heights of the Aisne. Hindenburg employed 
the same methods of defense during his general withdrawal to 
the Siegfried Line as had been developed in the smaller retire- 
ment from the Ancre valley. Machine-gun units were placed 




The Western Front near Arras and on the Aisne 

in selected strategic positions to delay the advance of the British 
and French, while the bulk of the German soldiers, stealthily 
quitting their former trenches, transported guns and ammuni- 
tion to the rear and systematically devastated the territory 
covered by their retreat. 

When the British discovered on March 15 that a general with- 
drawal was being carried out by the Germans, General Sir Doug- 
las Haig gave orders for an immediate advance of his forces 
along the whole line from Arras to Roye. Simultaneously, the 
French under General Nivelle began to advance on the front 
from Roye to Rheims. Chaulnes and Bapaume fell to the British 
on March 17, and Peronne and Mont St. Quentin were occupied 
the next day. At the same time the French entered Noyon, 
and speedily reached Tergnier, a town less than two miles from 
La Fere. 

The reasons given for this German withdrawal in March, 191 7, 
were many and varied. Reports from Berlin represented it as 
a strategical retreat intended to shorten the German line, to 



274 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

draw the Allies out into the open so that they could be defeated 
in pitched battles, and to nullify the vast preparations which 
the French and British had been making for a smashing offensive 
in the summer of 1917. On the other hand, Allied authorities 
insisted that the withdrawal had been forced upon the Germans 
and was in no way voluntary ; they pointed out that previous 
Anglo-French gains in the valleys of the Somme and Ancre had 
threatened the entire Noyon salient to such an extent that further 
gains would have caused a gigantic German disaster. At any 
rate the outstanding undisputed effects of the German retire- 
ment were, first, that the Germans now stood on a shortened 
line of great, perhaps impregnable, strength, and secondly, 
that the Allies had recovered more than a thousand square 
miles of French territory, including nearly four hundred towns 
with a population, before the war, of approximately 200,000. 

The territory abandoned by the Germans was a scene of horrible 
desolation. Wanton destruction was visible everywhere. Of 
the acts of barbarism and devastation committed by the retreat- 
ing Teutons with calculated cunning, only a faint notion can be 
given. As the official note of the French Government on the 
subject stated: "No motive of military necessity can justify 
the systematic ruin of public monuments, artistic and historical, 
and of public property, accompanied as it is by violence against 
civilians. Cities and villages in their entirety have been pil- 
laged, burned, and destroyed utterly ; private homes have been 
stripped of all furniture, which the enemy has carried off ; fruit 
trees have been torn up or blasted ; streams and wells have been 
polluted. The inhabitants, comparatively few in number, who 
have not been removed, have been left with a minimum of ra- 
tions, while the enemy has seized stocks supplied by the neutral 
food commission for the sustenance of the civil population. . . . 
This concerns not acts designed to hinder the operations of our 
armies but sheer devastation having for its sole purpose the ruin 
for years to come of one of the most fertile regions of France. 
The civilized world can only revolt against this conduct on the 
part of a nation which wished to impose its Kidtiir on all man- 
kind, but which now reveals itself once again as very close to 
barbarism and which, in a rage of disappointed ambition, tram- 
ples on the most sacred rights of humanity." 

By April, 191 7, the Germans were standing on the famous 
Hindenburg Line. They were certain that they could ward off 
frontal attacks against it, so splendid were both its natural and 
its artificial defenses, but they were not so sure of the pivots 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 275 



upon which it rested. These pivots were the positions about 
Arras in the north, and those in the south around Laon. It 
was near Arras and Laon that Generals Haig and Nivelle were 
already aiming offensives respectively of the British and of the 
French. 

The Battle of Arras was opened Easter Monday (April 9) on 
a front approximately forty-five miles long with Lens, the coal 
city, as the British objective at one end, and with Queant, an 
important point in the Hindenburg Line, as their objective at 
the other end. If these immediate objectives were taken, the 
way might then be open to the important cities of Douai and 
Cambrai. At first the British offensive went like clock-work. 
Aircraft, artillery, infantry, and tanks worked in perfect com- 
bination. Within three days Vimy Ridge and some two miles 
of the northern end of the Hindenburg Line had been carried 
and 12,000 prisoners and 150 guns had been captured. Queant 
was not yet reached, but Lens was inclosed in a dangerous 
"pocket." 

On April 16, exactly a week after the beginning of the British 
offensive in the vicinity of Arras, the French under General 
Nivelle inaugurated the second battle of the Aisne by assailing 
the southern pivot of the Hindenburg Line near Laon. Nivelle's 
rapid rise in the French army from the rank of colonel in Septem- 
ber, 1914, to that of generalissimo, succeeding Marshal Joffre, 




,'» Braye 



The Heights of the Aisne 



in December, 1916, had gone to his head. He had scant patience 
with the tactics which the Allies had developed during the past 
year on the Western Front — the advance by steady stages 
to limited objectives and the gradual defeat of the Germans 
through wastage of their man-power rather than by means of 
decisive engagements. Nivelle's aim was the " decisive blow" 
- not to weaken but to crush, not to "wear down" but to "break 



276 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

through." With superb self-confidence he gathered his armies 
for a supreme effort. He would force the heights of the Aisne 
in one bold assault from west, south, and southeast ; he would 
simultaneously carry the Rheims heights from the north; and 
at the same moment he would launch his main offensive through 
the gap between the two into the plain of Laon. It was by far 
the most ambitious attack planned in the West since the battle 
of the Marne, and the divisions employed were three times those 
used by Haig at Arras. 

Valorously the French fought, and some progress they made. 
They won all the banks of the Aisne from Soissons to Berry-au- 
Bac and all the spurs of the Aisne heights, and they captured 
21,000 prisoners and 175 guns. But the main German positions 
were too strong and too stubbornly defended to be taken by open, 
spectacular assault ; they firmly barred the way to Laon. The 
major strategy of Nivelle failed completely. 

The result was a pronounced popular reaction in France against 
the audacious methods of Nivelle in favor of the more cautious 
tactics previously exemplified by Petain and Foch. On April 
28, the premier, Alexandre Ribot, and Paul Painleve, who had 
recently succeeded General Lyautey as war minister, conferred 
with Nivelle ; and two days later it was announced that the 
post of Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of War had 
been revived, and that Petain had been appointed to fill it. 
This announcement proved to be only a precursor to a more 
drastic change, for on May 15 Petain formally succeeded Nivelle 
as commander-in-chief of the French armies in France while 
General Foch became Chief of Staff in Paris. 

Thus the French Government logically applied a fundamental 
lesson learned in the battle of the Aisne. Foch and Petain were 
just the men to comprehend that the Hindenburg Line could 
not be " broken through" or turned on its pivots and that their 
function was less to recover square miles of desolated territory 
than to wear down the man-power of the Germans by cautious 
but incessant offensives. With Petain and Foch the Allied 
strategy on the Western Front returned to the patient, laborious, 
and deadly methods which had been practiced on the Somme 
in the autumn of 191 6 and which had compelled the German 
withdrawal in March, 1917, to the Hindenburg Line. This 
was, in fact, the great lesson of the Hindenburg Line, and one 
which, when taken to heart through the bitter experiences of 
the battles of Arras and the Aisne, augured best for the ultimate 
victory of the Allies. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 277 

Throughout the remainder of 19 17 both the French and the 
British adhered to the policy of attrition, that is, wearing the 
Germans down in man power, morale, and materiel. In sector 
after sector along the Western Front they launched local offen- 
sives against limited objectives, and every little gain they made 
was an irrefusable invitation to the Germans to undertake waste- 
ful and costly counter-attacks. For the Allies it was the way 
to ultimate victory, and the only way. 

In May the British made a few further gains in the vicinity 
of Arras, strengthening their hold on Vimy Ridge and increas- 
ing their toll of prisoners for the entire battle of Arras to 20,000. 
In the same month, the French took the village of Craonne, 
ten miles southwest of Laon, and captured both ends of the 
Chemin des Dames, a celebrated shaded road constructed by 
Louis XV along the heights north of the Aisne. During the 
summer months the German Crown Prince is estimated to have 
lost more than 100,000 men in unsuccessful efforts to regain 
the eastern and western ends of the Chemin des Dames. Alto- 
gether the German losses along the Hindenburg Line and at the 
pivots from April to September were not less than 350,000. 

After a lull of several months, a renewal of the offensive on 
the Aisne occurred in October. The French struck on a six- 
mile front northeast of Soissons and in one of the most brilliant 
operations of the war advanced to an average depth of a mile 
and a half. The perfect cooperation between the artillery, 
tanks, aircraft, and infantry was a tribute to General Petain's 
foresight, energy, and organizing ability. The Germans soon 
found their remaining positions on the Chemin des Dames 
untenable, and consequently, by the end of the month, they fell 
back across the Ailette river upon Laon. In this last thrust 
the French regained nearly forty square miles of territory and 
captured 12,000 prisoners and 200 guns; they now dominated 
the valleys of the Ailette and the Aisne. 

Meanwhile the French executed a significant movement, far 
to the east of the Hindenburg Line, at Verdun. On August 
20 they made a quick thrust, after a brief artillery preparation, 
against the German positions on either side of the Meuse ; they 
captured Avocourt Wood, Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill), 
Corbeaux, and Cumieres Woods, and 4000 prisoners. In the 
next four days smashing blows were delivered which resulted in 
the capture of Regneville, Samogneux, Cote de l'Oie (Goose 
Ridge), and more than 15,000 prisoners. By the middle of Sep- 
tember, the French had recovered more than one hundred of the 



278 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

120 square miles of territory which the the Germans, under 
Crown Prince Frederick William, had seized in their mighty 
and protracted offensive of 191 6. 

The same tactics employed by the French at Verdun and 
on the Aisne were used by the British in Flanders. Following 
the cessation of the battle of Arras in May, 191 7, Sir Douglas 
Haig turned his attention northward. His first care was to 
straighten the British lines between Ypres and Lens by driving 
the Germans from their commanding salient on the Messines- 
Wytschaete ridge. Under the principal German fortifications 
on this ridge, British and colonial sappers had been digging for 
over fifteen months until now they had placed nineteen mines 
containing nearly five hundred tons of ammonite. Early in 
the morning of June 7, 191 7, the mines were exploded by elec- 
tricity, and a veritable man-made earthquake occurred. The 
tops of the hills were blown off and the earth rocked like a ship 
rolling at sea. The detonation could be heard within a radius 
of 150 miles. Simultaneously with the explosion of the mines, 
the artillery fire, which had been growing in intensity for two 
weeks, reached its culmination. Then the infantry, composed 
of English, Irish, Australian, and New Zealand units, swept 
forward on a front extending from Observation Ridge, south 
of Ypres, to Ploegsteert Wood, north of Armentieres, and within 
a brief time captured German positions on a ten-mile front 
including the villages of Messines and Wytschaete, and wiped 
out the menacing German salient. Seven thousand prisoners 
fell into British hands, and the estimated German casualties 
were 30,000. The total British losses were under io,ooo. ] 

With the Messines- Wytschaete Ridge in British possession, it 
was now safe for the Allies to inaugurate an offensive from Ypres. 
Of this offensive the immediate object was to gain the high 
ground in front of Ypres, called Passchendaele Ridge ; the ulti- 
mate objects were to compel the Germans to withdraw from the 
Belgian coast and thus to surrender their submarine bases at 
Ostend and Zeebrugge, and also to envelop the industrial 
city of Lille and the railway-center at Roulers. From July 
to November the conflict raged. British on the right and 
French on the left pressed forward yard by yard. Frequent 
torrential downpours of rain which repeatedly turned the low 
flat terrain into a sea of mud, made progress slow and halting. 
Yet the Allies, with the aid of vastly improved artillery, with 

1 Conspicuous among the British dead on this occasion was Major William 
Redmond, a member of Parliament and brother of the Irish Nationalist leader. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 279 

an apparently inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and with 
grim determination, plodded on. The Germans, heavily reen- 
forced from the Eastern Front, soon found that ordinary trenches 
could not withstand either the rains or the enemy-guns ; they 
began to take refuge behind bags of sand and in what the British 
soldiers called "pillboxes." These were concrete redoubts. 
They were oftentimes some distance apart and were just about 
level with the ground, making them in many cases invisible 




Battles of Messines Ridge and Ypees 

to aviators. They fairly bristled with machine guns, and unless 
they were destroyed by artillery fire, they were peculiarly fatal 
to attacking infantry. 

Preliminary attacks were made by the Allies at the end of 
July and in August, each resulting in expensive German counter- 
attacks. Between the middle of September and the middle of 
October the Allies delivered five extremely heavy blows, which 
won them an area of nearly twenty-three square miles and carried 



280 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

them to the Ypres-Roulers road on the northwest as well as 
advancing them a mile astride of the Ypres-Menin road. British 
artillery now commanded the Flanders plain, and guns of the 
largest caliber could effectively shell Roulers, about five miles 
distant. On October 30 the British entered Passchendaele, 
but were almost immediately driven out by vigorous counter- 
assaults. After a week of heavy bombardment, Canadian troops 
retook the town and German positions 800 yards beyond and 
held their gains in face of furious counter-attacks. Throughout 
November the Allies fought successfully to consolidate their 
new positions and to clear the sides of Passchendaele Ridge. 

The political and economic results of the Battle of Flanders 
were not advantageous to the Allies ; no sensational victory had 
been achieved; the Germans were still profiting by their con- 
trol of the Belgian coast and by their occupation of the important 
industrial center of Lille. From a strictly military point of 
view, however, the protracted conflict was advantageous. The 
Allies had enormously strengthened their hold on Ypres and 
had secured important new positions from which they might 
direct a more decisive offensive in 191 8 ; vastly more important, 
they had inflicted upon Germany such serious losses as no party 
to an endurance test could comfortably sustain. 

On November 20 the British started a drive toward Cambrai, 
which for a time threatened to smash the Hindenburg Line and 
possibly put an end to the deadlock on the Western Front. 
With scarcely any artillery preparation, the infantry, aided by 
a large number of huge tanks, plunged forward on the Bapaume- 
Cambrai road and toward the Scheldt Canal, capturing several 
villages, securing a part of Bourlon Wood, and rendering Ger- 
man occupation of Queant and Cambrai for a time most preca- 
rious. On the last day of November, however, before the British 
had been able to complete the consolidation of their newly won 
positions, the Germans launched a counter-offensive on a sixteen- 
mile front north, south, and east of the British wedge. On the 
north and east they failed to gain, but on the south they made 
such headway that the British were compelled to evacuate 
Bourlon Wood and to retire to their original positions. The 
battle of Cambrai ended on December 7, with honors — and 
losses — about evenly divided. In one respect this battle 
was enormously significant : it heralded the break-through and 
the open warfare of the succeeding spring. 

Over against all the numerous and varied offensives conducted 
by the British and French during the year 19 17, — at Arras, on 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 281 

the Aisne, at Verdun, and in Flanders, — only two offensives 
were attempted by the Germans on the whole extended Western 
Front. One of these was the counter-attack in the vicinity 
of Cambrai, just described ; and the other was a little offensive 
on the Yser, close to the Belgian coast, late in July. Here the 
British were surprised and driven back across the river, with a 
total loss of 3000 men. The very pettiness of the German 
success on the Yser and of the German recovery at Cambrai, 
when considered in conjunction with the large-scale German 




withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line and with the constant and 
effective Anglo-French thrusts along the whole Front, indicated 
to the world that the Allies not only were fully holding their own, 
but could take the offensive whenever and wherever tfrey wished. 
The endurance test was beginning to tell heavily against Germany. 

RECOVERY OF ALLIED PRESTIGE IN THE NEAR EAST 

Until 1 91 7 the most uniformly inglorious scene of Allied oper- 
ations had been the Near East. Beginning with the failure of 
the naval attack upon the Dardanelles in March, 191 5, one dis- 
aster after another had attended Allied arms and Allied diplo- 
macy. There were the failures in 191 5 to wrest the Gallipoli 



282 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

peninsula from the Turks, to reconstruct the Balkan League, 
to prevent Bulgaria from joining Mittel-Europa, and to save 
Serbia and Montenegro from conquest. In 1916 a large Allied 
army in Macedonia, frightened by the Bulgarians and flouted 
by a Greek king, had been helpless to succor Rumania ; and in 
far-away Mesopotamia a British expedition for the capture of 
Bagdad had ended in disaster. The Russians, it is true, had 
wrested Old Armenia (just south of the Black Sea) from the 
Turks, but their success was slight compensation for the over- 
whelming advantages which Germany had gained and still 
retained in the Near East. To Berlin and Vienna were tied fast 
by steel rails the cities of Belgrade, Sofia, and Constantinople ; 
and from the Bosphorus ran those Germanized trade-routes 
across Asia Minor and thence, either through Mesopotamia 
to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, in the general direction of 
India, or through Syria and Palestine to the Red Sea, in the 
general direction of Egypt. The Near East had become an 
aggregation of German satrapies. Mittel-Europa from the Baltic 
to Bagdad was a fact and not a fiction, and as a fact it would 
remain so long as Allied prestige was lacking in Turkey and in 
the Balkans. The Allies might undertake many offensives 
in France and in Flanders ; they would not shake the confidence 
of the peoples of the Near East or of the German people them- 
selves in the proud imperial destiny of the Hohenzollerns until 
they had won significant military successes in the Near East 
and recovered some of their own prestige. 

In the latter half of 1916 the British Government matured 
plans to assure the security of India and Egypt against the 
Mittel-Europa menace of the Turks. The expeditionary force 
in Egypt was augmented and its commander, Sir Archibald 
Murray, from his headquarters at Cairo, directed the building 
of a railway eastward from Kantara across the Sinai desert, 
whence a British invasion of Palestine might later be attempted. 
This project was aided by an open revolt of the Arabs against 
the Turks. Already predisposed to rebellion by the " liberalism " 
and scarcely concealed agnosticism of Enver Pasha and the 
other Young Turks, and by the deliberate abrogation of pro- 
visions of the Sacred Mohammedan Law laid down in the Koran 
itself, the Arabs of Hedjaz, east of the Red Sea, now felt them- 
selves provoked beyond endurance by the execution of some of 
their leaders. On November 16, 1916, Husein, sherif of Mecca, 
solemnly proclaimed the independence of Hedjaz with himself 
as Sultan, and was promptly recognized by the Entente Powers. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 283 

The revolting Arabs, by their operations north of the Red Sea 
and east of the Dead Sea, did much to render futile the Turco- 
German advance against Egypt, thus enabling the British to 
protect the Suez Canal and to construct the railway across the 
Sinai desert. And meanwhile, as special protection to India, 
the small expeditionary force at the head of the Persian Gulf 
was strengthened by reinforcements from India and from 
Great Britain and put under the command of Sir Stanley Maude 
(August, 19 1 6). 

By February, 191 7, General Maude was ready to attempt 
to retrieve General Townshend's disaster at Kut-el-Amara. 
The transport system was working well ; several river monitors 
had arrived to aid the projected offensive ; and the weather 
conditions were favorable to a renewal of fighting. As a result 
of a series of local engagements and of manceuvering for position, 
the British, by the middle of February, established their lines 
on both banks of the Tigris, where it formed a bend west of 
Kut-el-Amara. On February 24 Sanna-i-yat and part of the 
Shumran peninsula, the keys to Kut, were taken. The Turks 
believed these positions to be impregnable, and made gallant 
though costly efforts to defend them. Their fall compelled the 
Turks to abandon Kut-el-Amara and retreat up the river. 

In the pursuit the British gunboats on the Tigris wrought 
considerable havoc among the Turks by getting ahead of them 
and firing upon them as they approached. The Turkish boats 
on the river were destroyed, and the monitors which had been 
lost with the surrender of General Townshend's army were 
recaptured. The British reached Aziziyeh, halfway to Bagdad, 
on February 28, and early in March they forced the crossing of 
the Diala. Then, attacking the Turks from both sides of the 
Tigris, they drove them into Bagdad. In the night of March 
10, 191 7, the Turks evacuated the city, leaving in the hands of 
the British their own artillery, seized a year before at Kut-el- 
Amara, and a large number of Turkish guns. The capture of 
Bagdad was not of great strategic importance, but it had a re- 
markable effect upon morale. It appealed to jaded imaginations 
in England, France, and America; it alarmed the Central 
Empires ; and in the Near East it gave shape and substance to 
Allied prestige. 

To secure Bagdad against counter-attacks, General Maude 
pursued the fleeing Turks in three directions: his right wing 
cleared the caravan route leading into Persia; his left wing 
moved twenty-five miles up the Euphrates to the prepared 



284 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Turkish position of Ramadie ; and his center, advancing up the 
Tigris, took Samara on April 23 and thus gained control of the 
Bagdad-Samara railway, which facilitated the bringing up of 
supplies. Had it not been for the intense heat which began to' 
prevail at that season of the year in Mesopotamia and for the 
Russian Revolution which simultaneously demoralized the Rus- 
sian forces in Armenia, the Turkish armies might have been 
caught between upper and nether millstones and ground to bits 
on their nodal points at Mosul and Aleppo. As it was, the 
better part of Mesopotamia was in Allied hands, and the Turks 
had received a blow from which they could not recover. 

Meanwhile, there were significant developments in the Greek 
peninsula. For four months after the capture of Monastir 
by the Serbs, in November, 1916, the motley Allied Front in 
Macedonia, under General Sarrail, had remained comparatively 
inactive. In April, 191 7, a slight forward movement was at- 
tempted near Doiran and a few local gains were registered. 
But Sarrail's force was not yet strong enough to crush the Bul- 
garian and Austro-German armies facing it, especially since 
behind it lurked, in the person of King Constantine of Greece, 
a pro-German commander of a fairly large army which at any 
moment might be thrown into the balance against the Allies. 
The weakening of Russia and Rumania in 191 7 and their ultimate 
defection left the forces of Mittel-Europa in Macedonia quite 
unhampered and thereby postponed indefinitely any decisive 
offensive on the part of Sarrail. This was obviously of immediate 
disadvantage to the Allies. On the other hand, the Allies re- 
covered enough prestige in the Near East as a result of General 
Maude's successes in Mesopotamia to enable them fearlessly 
and drastically to interfere in the internal affairs of Greece and 
to deprive the dangerous, treacherous King Constantine of his 
occupation as trouble-maker. And this promised, in the long 
run, to be of the utmost advantage to the Allies. 

During May the Allied authorities at Salonica did everything 
they could to encourage Greeks to flock to the standard of revolt 
which Venizelos had already raised. By the end of that month 
Venizelos was estimated to have furnished nearly 60,000 Greek 
soldiers to the Allied army in Macedonia. Then, on June 10, 
191 7, French and British troops, entering Thessaly, occupied 
Volo and Larissa, and on the following day a French force seized 
the isthmus of Corinth. 

On June n, Charles Jonnart, formerly French governor of 
Algeria and now named high commissioner of Greece, arrived 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 285 

in Athens and demanded of the royalist premier, M. Zaimis, 1 
the immediate abdication of King Constantine and the renuncia- 
tion of the Crown Prince's right of succession. The king was 
not in a position to fight, and Jonnart was peremptory. There 
was only one thing to do. And so on June 12, 191 7, Constantine 
abdicated the throne of Greece in favor of his second son, Prince 
Alexander ; and on the next day the late sovereign and his 
Hohenzollern wife sailed away from Hellas under escort of two 
French destroyers. Under Jonnart's supervision, King Alex- 
ander was duly proclaimed, several notoriously pro-German 
Greek leaders were expelled from the country, and an accord 
was reached between the partisans of Venizelos and those of 
Zaimis. On June 25 Zaimis resigned and Venizelos became 
prime minister of a united, pro-Ally Greece. On July 2 all 
diplomatic relations between Greece and the Central Powers 
were ruptured and the state of war which had hitherto existed 
in Venizelos's jurisdiction was now extended to the whole coun- 
try. On July 7 the Government convoked the Chamber which 
had been elected in May, 191 5, but which had been dissolved 
illegally by Constantine. At the end of July the Allied troops 
of occupation were withdrawn. Greece was finally in the Great 
War on the side of the Allies, and the entire Greek army, instead 
of constituting a hostile threat in the rear of General Sarrail's 
force, was now available in full strength for an Allied offensive 
in the Balkans. Throughout the remainder of 191 7 much atten- 
tion was given to strengthening and reorganizing the Macedonian 
Front ; and General Sarrail, whose reputation had been fatally 
clouded for two years by a most unfortunate series of untoward 
circumstances, was succeeded in the supreme command in Decem- 
ber by the energetic and resourceful General Guillaumat. 

Even more helpful to the recovery of Allied prestige in the 
Near East than the revolution in Greece and the capture of Bag- 
dad was the success which attended in 191 7 the British offensive 
in Palestine. Under Sir Archibald Murray, British troops, 
advancing from northern Egypt, had driven the Turkish forces 
before them across the Sinai Desert 2 and had constructed a 
railway from Kantara to Rafa on the southwestern edge of 
Palestine. Thence they had moved northward along the coast, 
but had been checked in two successive battles, in March and 

1 Zaimis had succeeded Lambros as King Constantine's prime minister on 
May 4, 191 7. 

2 The Turkish forces, it should be remembered, were here engaged on two fronts : 
the one, against the British advancing from Egypt ; the other, against the Arabs of 
Hedjaz. 



286 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



in April, and prevented from occupying Gaza. It was then 
that General Murray was recalled and succeeded by General 
Edmund Allenby, a particularly brilliant British cavalry leader, 
who devoted the hot summer months to improving the morale 
and equipment of the expeditionary force. 

In October the offensive was renewed. While the Arabs of 
Hedjaz under their sultan kept large Turkish forces desperately 
engaged east of the Dead Sea, Allenby took Beersheba in a 
surprise attack and on November 6 captured Gaza. Contin- 
uing his advance northward, with comparatively little opposi- 
tion, General Allenby cut the Jaffa- Jerusalem railway at Ludd 




and El Ramie and on November 16 g^ccupied Jaffa. The British 
then began a movement to encircle the city of Jerusalem, drawing 
towards it from the northwest, west, and south. All the Turkish 
positions around the Holy City were taken by storm; and, as 
the British closed in, it became apparent that the Turks would 
not risk a siege. On December 10, 191 7, Jerusalem was sur- 
rendered to the British army of General Allenby, and the Turkish 
rule which had there endured for seven centuries came to an end. 
The success of British arms in Palestine was loudly acclaimed 
by the Christian populations of the Entente Powers as the final 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 287 

achievement of the goal of the medieval Crusaders. It likewise 
stimulated the aspirations of the Zionists for the reestablishment 
of a Jewish state in Palestine and of the Mohammedan Arabs 
for the construction of a "Greater Arabia." 

SEEMING OBSTACLES TO ALLIED VICTORY 

From the preceding sections of this chapter one would be 
justified in concluding that the Allies in 191 7 were clearly on 
the way to ultimate certain victory. They were recovering 
their prestige in the Near East. They were proving their supe- 
riority on the Western Front. And if they were temporarily 
weakened by the defection of Russia, they were strengthened 
by the adherence of the United States to their cause. Of their 
enemies, one after another was experiencing discomfort and 
humiliation : Turkey was losing Mesopotamia and Palestine ; 
Bulgaria was becoming cynical and indifferent ; Austria-Hun- 
gary was on the verge of revolution and disruption ; and in 
Germany there was ominous fault-finding. The submarine 
warfare, on which the Teutons now chiefly relied, fell far short 
in December of what in January had been expected ; and the 
governments of the Central Empires devoted less attention to 
military campaigns than to "peace drives." 

Yet, curiously enough, the peoples of France, Italy, and Great 
Britain did not perceive the signs of the time or did not read 
them aright. Instead of realizing that the chances of their 
ultimate victory were immeasurably improved by the events 
of 191 7, they fell into a strange mood of poignant pessimism. 
Like wanderers in a wilderness who, without knowing it, were 
almost in sight of the promised land, they were more terrified 
by the dangers and shadows through which they had passed 
than elated by the prospect of sunshine and refreshment beyond. 
Month after month, and year after year, the Great War had 
dragged on ; and the Entente nations, who had borne its heat 
and burden almost from the beginning, would not have been 
human if they had not in their hearts grown sick and tired of 
it by 1917. In their natural war-weariness these peoples viewed 
daily developments out of proper perspective. They magnified 
the assistance which the defection of Russia would bestow upon 
their enemies, and they mimimized the aid which they themselves 
would obtain from the United States. It seemed as though 
all the resources of Russia would be instantly at the command of 
Germany, and as though American troops could never be trained 



288 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and equipped and transported to France and rendered really 
serviceable. Barred by governmental censorship from exact 
knowledge of the progress of the submarine warfare, they tended 
to discount the official statements that it was failing of its pur- 
pose. The battles along the Hindenburg Line, at Arras, on the 
Aisne, at Verdun, and in Flanders, were too protracted, too 
bitterly contested, too sanguinary, to establish Allied military 
superiority as a demonstrated fact. And the deposition of a 
Greek king and the capture of Bagdad and of Jerusalem, though 
noisily acclaimed, were popularly deemed too insignificant in 
themselves materially to affect the fortunes of the Great War. 

Under these circumstances a movement gathered headway in 
Allied countries in 1917 in favor of a "negotiated peace," that 
is, in favor of a " peace without victory" as opposed to a "peace 
through victory." This so-called defeatist movement drew its 
strength from quite diverse, even incompatible, elements. In 
the first place, there were groups of Socialist and other ultra- 
radical workingmen who, influenced largely by their Russian 
brethren, accused their own governments of pursuing "imperial- 
istic" aims and themselves championed the principle of "no 
annexations, no indemnities." Secondly, there were certain 
bankers and industrial magnates who feared lest protraction 
of the war might destroy national credit, drive all governments 
into bankruptcy, and pave the way for the spread of socialistic 
revolution throughout the world and for the demoralization of 
the whole capitalistic structure of civilized society. Thirdly, 
there were ecclesiastical groups who viewed with pity and chagrin 
this most terrible war between professed Christian nations and 
who felt instinctively that the Church should reassert its moral 
leadership in the affairs of mankind. Fourthly, there were 
groups of pacifists who, though pretty effectually silenced by 
their warlike compatriots during the earlier years of the war, 
now found expression for their conviction that war in general 
is immoral and inexpedient and that peaceful negotiation and 
arbitration are always preferable to organized slaughter. Fi- 
nally, there were a few old-time diplomatists who, long deprived 
of the exercise of their vocation, yearned to supplant the soldiers 
in the limelight and to obtain if possible by intrigue what had 
not been secured by force of arms. 

Defeatism in Allied countries was naturally encouraged by 
Germany. The three successive chancellors — Bethmann-Holl- 
weg, Michaelis, and Hertling — constantly prated about their 
desire for a negotiated peace and about the demoniacal victory- 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 289 

lust of the Allied governments. At the same time they intrigued 
more or less adroitly with every disaffected or discontented 
element in Allied countries. For example, the German Govern- 
ment was doubtless privy to the secret, informal conferences 
which were held in Switzerland in the summer of 191 7 among 
certain bankers of France, Great Britain, and Germany. There 
were signs, moreover, that Bethmann-Hollweg backed the 
efforts of the Socialists to hold an international conference at 
Stockholm. And it was evident that Michaelis and Herding, 
as well as Count Czernin of Austria, welcomed the papal proposals 
for peace. Each of these intrigues promised to embarrass the 
Allies and to weaken their morale. 

It was natural that many Socialists should seek the early 
ending of the Great War. The war was not of their making, 
they insisted, and it was working havoc among them. Karl 
Marx, the master mind of Socialism, had pointed seventy years 
ago to the international solidarity of all the world's workingmen 
as the goal of his movement ; yet most of the progress made in 
this direction in the sixty-seven years from 1848 to 19 14 appeared 
to have been lost in the three years from 1914 to 1917. In 
every belligerent country there was a cleavage in the national 
Socialist Party on the question of supporting, and cooperating 
with, the bourgeois government, the Majority Socialists usually 
sharing the popular enthusiasm for national victory, and the 
Minority Socialists, or Independents, normally indulging in 
carping criticism. Besides, as a general rule, the Socialists 
of Mittel-Europa were on most unfriendly terms with the Social- 
ists of the Entente Powers. The international organization 
was moribund : conspicuous figures in it, like Scheidemann of 
Germany, Guesde of France, and Vandervelde of Belgium, 
were now whole-hearted champions of their respective national 
causes ; and what remained was a disjointed and dispirited 
remnant in Holland and in the Scandinavian countries. 

With the advent of the Russian Revolution, the Socialists 
took heart. In May, 1917, a group of Russian Socialists pub- 
lished an appeal for the reassembling of the International and 
for the calling of a peace congress, and a Dutch-Scandinavian 
Committee, under the presidency of Branting, the leader of the 
Swedish Socialists, invited Socialist representatives of all nations 
to meet at Stockholm. Almost simultaneously, Austrian and 
German Socialists drew up a peace program, of which the 
main points were: (1) no annexations; (2) no indemnities; 
(3) autonomy for the subject nationalities of the Dual Mon- 



290 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

archy ; (4) independence for Finland and Russian Poland ; (5) 
restoration of commerce on land and sea, modification of the 
productive system, completion of an international administra- 
tion for all sea routes and interoceanic canals, and construction 
and administration of railways under international auspices ; 
and (6) prohibition of the capture and of the arming of mer- 
chant vessels. In Germany, the Majority Socialists set forth 
a supplementary program including limitation of armaments, 
compulsory arbitration, the "open door" for colonies, free trade, 
and democratic control of diplomacy ; while the Minority Social- 
ists included in their special peace-aims the restoration of Bel- 
gium and Serbia, an independent Poland, and a plebiscite for 
Alsace-Lorraine. In June Socialist leaders arrived at Stock- 
holm from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria ; and dis- 
cussions began between them and Socialists of neutral states. 

In most Allied countries the proposed Stockholm Conference 
was viewed at first with disfavor and suspicion as a bit of subtle 
German propaganda. But the Russian Government of Kerensky 
endorsed the project so enthusiastically that gradually a majority 
of the French Socialists and of the British Labor Party were 
won over to its support. Nevertheless, the Governments of 
France, Great Britain, and the United States withheld pass- 
ports from Socialist delegates and prevented their countries 
from being represented at Stockholm. One result was the 
complete failure of the Stockholm Conference. Another result 
was acrimonious discussion of the subject in Allied countries 
and increased opposition to the vigorous prosecution of the 
war. In Great Britain, Arthur Henderson, the leader of the 
Labor Party, resigned from the war cabinet on August n. In 
France, the Socialists withdrew from the cabinet in September. 
Altogether, the opposition of the Allied Governments to the 
Stockholm Conference opened a new and rich field for insidious 
German propaganda. 

From the Catholic Church, as well as from the Socialists, 
came in 191 7 a special plea for peace. In a note dated August 
1, Pope Benedict XV called upon all the belligerent Powers to 
consider the possibilities of the cessation of war. The pope 
outlined the general terms which he thought would assure "a 
just and lasting peace" : (1) the replacing of material force by 
"the moral force of right" ; (2) a "simultaneous and reciprocal 
decrease of armaments"; (3) settlement of international dis- 
putes by arbitration; (4) a guarantee of "true freedom and 
community of the seas " ; (5) mutual renunciation of indemnities, 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 291 

although allowing for exceptions which "certain particular rea- 
sons" would seem to justify; (6) evacuation and restoration of 
all occupied territories; (7) an examination "in a conciliatory- 
spirit" of rival territorial claims such as those of Alsace-Lor- 
raine and the Trentino, taking into account "the aspirations of 
the population." To this note President Wilson replied on 
August 27. He pointed out that the actions of the existing 
German Government rendered fruitless any negotiations with 
it, and called upon the German people to repudiate their "irre- 
sponsible" government. At the same time the President indi- 
cated that it was no part of the plan of the United States to join 
in a movement to crush the German people. He repudiated 
the idea of "punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, 
the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues" 
as "inexpedient and in the end worse than futile." The Entente 
Powers generally accepted President Wilson's statement as 
embodying their own views, and made no detailed replies to the 
Pope. On the other hand, the Central Empires, though pre- 
serving a marvelous silence upon the vital questions of restora- 
tion of conquered territory and the payment of indemnities, were 
quite punctilious in flattering Pope Benedict and in assuring 
him that they approved the limitation of armaments, the guar- 
antee of the freedom of the seas, and the substitution of the 
"moral power of right" for the "material power of arms." The 
pope could hardly have been deceived by the Teutonic diplo- 
matists, so wide was the gulf between their theory and their 
practice, and certainly the great bulk of Catholics in Allied 
countries continued, as before, to give the most loyal support 
to their respective governments ; yet among the more ignorant 
classes of Catholics, the papal peace effort was doubtless utilized 
for purposes of German propaganda. 

Enough has been said perhaps to indicate the bases of the 
defeatist movement. There were echoes of it in Great Britain * 
and even in the United States, but it was in France that it reached 
truly alarming proportions. In France, the scene of the most 
heartrending combats of three years, there was naturally a 
greater war-weariness than elsewhere, in measure as the sacrifices 
and sufferings of France had been greater. There was in France, 
moreover, an instinctive popular fear lest out of the war might 
arise a military dictator, — and France had had in the past too 

1 British pacifists applauded the resignation of Arthur Henderson, the Labor 
Party leader, from the War Cabinet and welcomed a plea put forward by Lord 
Lansdowne, a distinguished Conservative diplomatist, in behalf of a "peace by 
compromise." 



292 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

many military dictators. These feelings led to the downfall 
of the Briand cabinet in March, 191 7, and to the creation of a 
more "moderate" ministry under Alexandre Ribot. Ribot was 
an estimable gentleman, seventy-five years of age, who had had 
much experience in public and private finance, but whose firm- 
ness consisted in obstinacy and whom sluggishness led to repose 
confidence in unworthy or inefficient subordinates. He angered 
the French Socialists by refusing to allow their delegates to 
proceed to Stockholm ; yet he clung tenaciously to his minister 
of the interior, Louis Malvy, who actually encouraged Socialists 
and pacifists to air their grievances and to agitate for a "nego- 
tiated peace." The weakness, if not corruption, of Malvy 
combined with the depression which overspread France as the 
result of General Nivelle's costly failure in the battle of the 
Aisne to pave the way for the campaign of defeatism, championed 
and in part financed by Germany. 

Among the active agents of the defeatist movement in France 
were a certain Duval, the manager of the newspaper Bonnet 
Rouge; M. Humbert, a member of the Senate and the owner of 
the Paris Journal; Bolo Pasha, a former French official of the 
Egyptian khedive, a financier and an adventurer ; and several 
members of the Chamber of Deputies. These men accepted 
large sums of German money, which they devoted to the creation 
of a sentiment within France in behalf of an early peace with 
the Central Empires. But the real head of the defeatist move- 
ment was Joseph Caillaux, a wealthy banker, acknowledged 
head of the anti-clerical Radical Party in France, and formerly 
prime minister. Ever since the beginning of the war this dis- 
tinguished "grandmaster of the backstairs" had led a strange, 
peripatetic life, and wherever he went mischief seemed to seed 
and flourish. He was at heart a friend of Germany and an 
enemy of England ; he believed that Germany was certain to 
win the war and that France should make terms with the inevi- 
table victor before it was too late. He was determined to safe- 
guard his own banking interests. He was thoroughly selfish 
and absolutely unscrupulous. He associated with pro-German 
pacifists, adventurers, and traitors. He conducted mysterious 
intrigues in Spain, in Switzerland, and in Italy. Formerly a 
professed pope-baiter, he now condescended to visit the Vatican 
and endeavored to ensnare bishops and cardinals in the meshes 
of his conspiracy. Formerly a stout proponent of capitalism, 
he now hobnobbed with extreme Socialists and praised their 
revolutionary aims. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 293 

Neither Malvy nor Ribot took any steps to counteract or 
destroy the propaganda of defeatism, which grew steadily 
throughout the summer of 191 7. But gradually voices were 
raised by true French patriots alike against the defeatists for 
their temerity and against the Government for its supineness. 
Particularly strident rose the voice of that old war-horse of 
French politics and patriotism, Georges Clemenceau. In his 
Parisian newspaper he fairly lashed the Government and the 
intriguers. He recognized that the hour was supremely critical 
in French history and he was ready to dare anything to save 
his beloved France from treason and dishonor. 

So great was the patriotic outcry of Clemenceau and his 
friends that Malvy resigned as minister of the interior on the last 
day of August. In September the whole cabinet was recon- 
structed, Painleve becoming premier, Ribot assuming the port- 
folio of foreign affairs, and the Socialists dropping out. But 
Painleve's ministry lasted only two months ; an adverse vote 
in the Chamber on the subject of the defeatist scandals occa- 
sioned its resignation; and on November 16, 191 7, Clemenceau 
himself, the "Tiger" and the "breaker of cabinets," as he was 
variously styled, became prime minister and minister of war. 

Clemenceau, though seventy-six years of age, threw himself 
with the zest and zeal of a young man into the task of destroying 
defeatism and assuring "peace through victory." Stephen 
Pichon became minister of foreign affairs; Jules Pams, of the 
interior; Louis Klotz, of finance; Louis Loucheur, of muni- 
tions ; and Charles Jonnart, of blockade and invaded regions. 
The small fry of defeatist intrigue, such as Bolo and his asso- 
ciates, were promptly arrested, tried, and punished. Malvy 
was exiled. And in January, 1918, Clemenceau dared to order 
the arrest of the formidable Caillaux on the charge of having 
endangered the security of the state. "It was probably the 
most courageous political act of the war." 

Clemenceau's brusque dealing with French defeatists came 
none too early, for at that very moment the poison of defeatism 
was bringing Italy to the point of national disaster. Taking 
advantage of the spread of pacifism and of the spirit of unrest 
and sedition in Italy, 1 the Austro-Germans in October and No- 

1 A secret campaign was conducted for months by German and Bolshevist agents 
in Italy. Insidious appeals were addressed to ignorant Catholic peasants as well 
as to the extreme Socialists of the cities. In August there were serious riots at 
Turin and even more serious mutinies among troops sent to suppress the riots. Yet 
despite the multiplication of signs of the weakening of popular morale, the Gov- 
ernment of Premier Boselli remained strangely indifferent and unmoved. 



2Q4 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

vember, 1917, hurled large armies against General Cadorna's 
forces and succeeded in occupying four thousand square miles 
of Italian territory and in capturing nearly 300,000 prisoners 
and 2700 guns. Just as Serbia had been overcome in the autumn 
of 1915 and Rumania in the autumn of 1916, so in the autumn 
of 19 1 7 it was planned by Germany to put Italy out of the war. 
Having prepared the ground by means of sinister defeatist 
propaganda, Germany sought to complete the work of destruc- 
tion by resort to a crushing military blow. 

At the beginning of October, 191 7, the main Italian armies, 
composed of seasoned veterans, were fighting the Austrians on 
comparatively narrow fronts in the difficult country east of the 
Isonzo river : one army was struggling for the mastery of the 
Carso Plateau and the route to Trieste ; the other, based on 
Gorizia and Cividale, was concentrating its attacks upon the 
Bainsizza Plateau, farther north. Still farther north, on the 
upper Isonzo east of Caporetto, was yet another Italian force ; 
but it, like the Italian armies along the peaks of the Carnic 
Alps and on the Trentino Front, consisted chiefly of "terri- 
torials," that is, of older men who in peace time were held in 
reserve, with only a sprinkling of soldiers who had seen long and 
active service. 

Meanwhile Ludendorff, the actual director of Mittel-Europd's 
General Staff, was preparing a great Austro-German offensive. 
The growth of the pacifistic Bolshevist agitation in Russia 
enabled him to transfer about 100,000 men and great quantities 
of heavy artillery from the Eastern to the Italian Front. The 
simultaneous development of defeatism in Italy led to an aston- 
ishing fraternization of Austrian and Italian troops at certain 
points on the Italian Front and resulted in a serious impairment 
of the morale of various Italian military units. The stage was 
set for another spectacular Teutonic offensive ; and for it Luden- 
dorff's strategy was excellent. He planned to strike the chief 
blow at the unseasoned and corrupted Italian troops on the 
upper Isonzo, to break through, and then to cut the lines of 
communication of the Bainsizza and Carso armies, thereby 
causing their retirement, and perhaps their surrender, by out- 
flanking them. Italian disaster would relieve Austria-Hun- 
gary of fear for her western frontiers, just as the Bolshevist revo- 
lution in Russia was ridding her of enemies on her eastern bor- 
ders. Austria-Hungary could then breathe again quite freely, 
and Mittel-Europa would be able to bring all its resources and 
all its energies to bear upon the French Front. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 295 



On October 21 Austro-German batteries of heavy artillery 
bombarded the Plezzo-Tolmino front and the northern edge of 
the Bainsizza Plateau. As the Italian guns were greatly out- 
ranged and outnumbered, the Teutons with little difficulty 
broke through the defensive positions and crossed to the western 
bank of the upper Isonzo. Two Italian corps threw down their 
rifles and treasonably ran away or surrendered, thus uncovering 
Caporetto and permitting the enemy promptly to outflank the 
Italian armies to the south. The rapid advance of the Teutons 
from Caporetto made the hasty retreat from the Bainsizza and 
Carso plateaus westward across the Isonzo almost a rout. On 
October 27 Berlin announced the capture in five days of 60,000 
men and 500 guns. For a time it seemed as though General 
Cadorna would be unable to extricate his menaced armies. On 







The Austro-German Invasion of Italy 

October 28 Cividale was taken, and on the same day Gorizia 
was reoccupied by the Austrians. On October 30 Udine, the 
seat of Italian general headquarters, fell ; and by November 1 
the Austro-Germans were on the Tagliamento river, well within 
Italian territory, and in possession of 180,000 prisoners and 
1500 captured guns. The forced withdrawal of the main Italian 
armies from the Isonzo jeopardized the Italian troops guarding 
the frontier in the Carnic Alps. These troops were consequently 
obliged to abandon the mountain passes and to beat a precipitate 
retreat down the streams running into the upper reaches of the 
Piave and Tagliamento rivers. 

The Tagliamento did not suffice to hold the victorious 



296 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Teutons, who threw pontoon bridges across it in scores of places 
and drove the Italians back to the Livenza, the next river flow- 
ing into the Gulf of Venice parallel to the Tagliamento. The 
Livenza, too, proved inadequate for serious defense and was 
frantically clung to merely to allow the completion of intrench- 
ments along the line of the Piave River, ten to twenty miles 
farther west. 

At this juncture French and British infantry and artillery, 
hurriedly dispatched from the Western Front, began to arrive. 
General Diaz supplanted General Cadorna as commander-in- 
chief of the Italian armies. And resistance to the Teutonic 
offensive commenced to stiffen. The line of the lower Piave 
held, despite a few temporary successes of the Austrians, notably 
the capture of Zenson. Allied monitors were employed to shell 
the southern extremity of the enemy line and thus, in a measure, 
to protect Venice. A large area between Venice and the mouth 
of the Piave was flooded to prevent a direct attack upon the 
famous old city. 

Finding all efforts to force a crossing of the lower Piave 
futile, the Austro-Germans sought to outflank the new Italian 
lines by striking at the Asiago Plateau and the range of moun- 
tains between the upper courses of the Brenta and Piave rivers. 
Masses of Austrians and Germans were hurled at the Italian 
rock positions, but in vain. Their assaults were comparable 
to those made by the Crown Prince during the great drive on 
Verdun in 1916. Although the Italians were forced to yield 
some ground, the Austro-German attempt to reach the Venetian 
plains from the north was foiled as effectually as was their attempt 
to cross the lower Piave. In December, however, new anxiety 
was caused the Allies by desperate assaults on the Asiago Plateau 
and the upper reaches of the Brenta ; Monte Asolone was cap- 
tured by the Teutons, and likewise the lower of the two summits 
of Monte Tomba. 

With the coming of the new year, Italian prospects brightened 
perceptibly. On December 30 Monte Tomba was recovered, 
and in January the Teutons were compelled to relinquish Monte 
Asolone and the bridgehead on the Piave at Zenson. The Austro- 
Germans rested from their labors and the Italians firmly estab- 
lished themselves in their new lines from the Asiago Plateau to 
the mouth of the Piave. The retreat from the Isonzo had reached 
its end ; it had taken heavy toll of Italy's strength, but it had 
failed to eventuate in that decisive disaster which for some 
weeks had seemed inevitable. 



ALLIES PAVE WAY FOR ULTIMATE VICTORY 297 

The retreat to the Piave, though not a disaster, was enough 
of a misfortune to shock the Italian people profoundly. It 
welded them into a closer union, and roused among them a more 
fiercely patriotic spirit. It forced reforms in the army, and com- 
pelled the Government to give special attention to the "civil 
front," which had been weakened from neglect and treason. In 
the midst of the reverses on the Isonzo, the Boselli ministry had 
resigned, and a new and more energetic one had been formed 
with Vittorio Orlando as premier and minister of the interior, 
and Francesco Nitti as minister of the treasury, Baron Sidney 
Sonnino retaining the portfolio of foreign affairs. Under Or- 
lando's leadership, defeatism was stamped out of Italy. 

The defeatist movement (with all which defeatism implied 
in Italy and in France) was seemingly in 191 7 a very grave 
obstacle to Allied victory. It was due, as has been pointed out, 
to general war weariness and to specific discouragement result- 
ing from the revolutionary defection of Russia and the unavoid- 
able delay in America. Abetted and exploited by the Central 
Empires, it might have proved fatal to the Allied cause had not 
the Teutons overreached themselves. The military drive of 
the Austro-Germans into Italy in the autumn of 1917 and the 
peace which they forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk and 
upon Rumania at Bucharest, sufficed to convince the bulk of 
the Allied free nations, even many former pacifists and "defeat- 
ists" among them, that the Central Empires were thoroughly 
dishonest in pretending to champion "peace without victory." 
Germany was obviously intent upon "victory through peace." 
And in this circumstance the only safe and sane motto for the 
Allies was "peace through victory." It took a long time and 
bitter experience to commit the Allied peoples to this view of 
affairs, but it was a happy augury of the future that early in 
1918 they were so committed. It was a happy augury, too, that 
by that time the Allies were cooperating with one another loyally 
and unselfishly and that presiding over the destinies of the chief 
associated Powers were such resolute men as Clemcnceau, Or- 
lando, Lloyd George, and Woodrow Wilson. 

It was also a happy augury of the future that at this very time, 
when the patience of many persons had been exhausted in fruit- 
less efforts to obtain any clear and concise statement of war 
aims from the professional diplomatists of Mittel-Europa, 
President Wilson should set forth succinctly and eloquently a 
code of Allied war aims. Speaking before the American Congress 
on January 8, 19 18, the President presented his views in fourteen 



298 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

points: (1) open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, and no 
secret diplomacy in the future; (2) absolute freedom of navi- 
gation in peace and war outside territorial waters, except where 
seas may be closed by international action; (3) removal as far 
as possible of all economic barriers ; (4) adequate guarantees 
for the reduction of national armaments ; (5) an absolutely 
impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, the interests of the 
peoples concerned having equal weight with the equitable claim 
of the Government whose title is to be determined ; (6) all Rus- 
sian territory to be evacuated, and Russia given full oppor- 
tunity for self-development, the Powers aiding ; (7) complete 
evacuation and restoration of Belgium, without any limit to 
her sovereignty ; (8) all French territory to be freed, invaded 
portions restored, and the wrong done by Prussia in 187 1 in 
the matter of Alsace-Lorraine righted ; (9) readjustment of 
Italian frontiers on lines of nationality ; (10) peoples of Austria- 
Hungary accorded an opportunity of autonomous development ; 
(n) Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro evacuated, Serbia given 
access to the sea, and relations of Balkan States determined on 
lines of allegiance and nationality under international guaran- 
tees; (12) Non-Turkish nationalities in the Ottoman Empire 
assured of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles to 
be permanently free to all ships; (13) an independent Polish 
state, including territories inhabited by indisputably Polish 
populations and having access to the sea; and (14) a general 
association of nations must be formed under specific covenants 
for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political inde- 
pendence and territorial integrity to great and small states 
alike. 

The celebrated " Fourteen Points" speedily became the charter 
of Allied war aims. They constituted the goal throughout 19 18 
of that way which the Allies, despite obstacles, had been paving 
during 191 7 for ultimate victory. 



CHAPTER XIII 
GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 
"WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY" 

Germany was possessed of madness. It was her delusions 
of persecution and grandeur which had been the immediate 
cause of the Great War in 1914, and throughout its subsequent 
course she had harbored in her disordered mind recurring halluci- 
nations of victory. As a rule, striking feats such as the Drives 
of Mackensen and Hindenburg into Russia and the conquest 
of Serbia in 191 5 and of Rumania in 19 16 signified more to her 
than the uprising of the whole world against her, more than the 
mighty holding battles of the Marne, of Verdun, of the Somme, 
and of Flanders, more than the very real loss of sea power, more 
even than the increasingly frightful attrition and wastage of her 
stores of men and munitions. 

For a time in 191 7 Germany's madness took the form of 
melancholia. She grew depressed and morose. To foreigners 
it appeared as though she were about to put on sackcloth and 
ashes. And in fact, had it not been for certain external stimuli 
which recalled her earlier madness, she might conceivably have 
passed from mania through temporary melancholia into a state 
of mind approaching healthy sanity. There was a time in 19 17, 
it should be remembered, when the majority of the German 
people felt stirrings of reform and aspirations for peace, and when 
the Government itself was coquetting with diplomacy and 
making eyes at democracy. Late in 1917, however, the Austro- 
Germans won a great military victory on the Isonzo and drove 
the Italians far back to the Piave, and at the same time Russia's 
descent to chaos became rapidly accelerated. German melan- 
cholia speedily disappeared, and Germany lapsed once more 
into acute megalomania. Every section of the country, except 
the Minority Socialists, became converted to a " German" peace, 
and the journalists and the politicians shrieked as loudly for con- 
quest as they had done in 1914. 

Domestic discontents of the summer of 191 7 were quelled by 

299 



300 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

March, 1918. By this time German eyes were blinded to the 
steadily disruptive tendencies in Austria-Hungary, to the cynical 
indifference of Bulgaria, and to the actual dismemberment of the 
Ottoman Empire ; they still saw, or thought they saw, Mittel- 
Europa stretching in majesty from the Baltic and North Seas to 
the ^Egean and on to Mesopotamia and Syria, united in aims, 
rich in resources, and indomitable in arms. They perceived on 
all sides vanquished and vassal states — -Belgium, Luxemburg, 
Poland, Serbia, Montenegro, Rumania, Finland, Lettland 
(Latvia), Lithuania, and Ukrainia. They had just beheld the 
signing of the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, which 
formally acknowledged the subjugation of the whole Russian 
Empire and abolished the entire Eastern Front. They reflected 
that the submarine warfare was doing its work rapidly and 
effectively, that the United States was despatching few troops 
to Europe, and that England, starved and bleeding, would soon 
sue for peace. They knew that Italy was defeated and on the 
defensive. Only the Western Front remained an eyesore to the 
Germans, and surely this one little spot on Europe's surface 
could now be quickly cleaned up by those Teutonic demigods 
who had conquered the rest of the world. 

In February, 19 18, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, the Thors of 
modern German mythology, met the Reichstag in secret session 
and explained their supreme plan. They would concentrate all 
available forces immediately on the Western Front and inaugu- 
rate a colossal drive against the French and British. Simulta- 
neously the Bulgarians would press the Allied troops in Macedonia, 
and the Austrians would launch another offensive against the 
Italians ; but the Western Front would become the scene of the 
final, decisive combat. Confession had to be made, in confidence, 
that the submarine campaign during 191 7 had not done all that 
had been expected of it and that American troops could and 
would land in Europe in large numbers. But American troops 
must come slowly, and once across the Atlantic they must under- 
go thorough training before they would be fit to serve in front- 
line trenches. During the next six months, therefore, the French 
and British would have to fight their own battle. But the 
British could add no new recruitment of any appreciable size to 
their forces already in the field, — they were kept too busy 
supplying materiel and circumventing submarines and coping 
with Irish difficulties ; while the French were absolutely at the 
end of their rope, so far as man power was concerned, and their 
morale was thought to be at a very low ebb. On the other hand, 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 301 

Germany could at once materially strengthen her armies on the 
Western Front, she could add to them not only new recruits 
from home and some divisions withdrawn from Italy and from 
the Balkans, but also at least half a million seasoned veterans no 
longer needed in the East. Furthermore, she could now effect 
an enormous concentration of guns, what with captures from 
Italy and Russia, and those either released from the defunct 
Eastern Front, or loaned from Austria. 

In view of these circumstances Ludendorff and Hindenburg 
promised certain and complete victory before the autumn of 
1918. Now, if ever, was the hour to strike. Matters should be 
pushed. All the German armies should be set in motion to 
overwhelm the Franco-British forces in the West, to capture the 
channel ports and Paris, to put France out of the war, and, in a 
word, to complete the task begun in 1914, but interrupted at the 
Battle of the Marne. It must be done in four months, — in six 
months at the outside, — and it would be done. Hindenburg 
and Ludendorff gave their word for it. To be sure, for such 
a triumph a price must be paid. The army chiefs put it at a 
million German casualties ; on reconsideration, they increased 
their estimate to a million and a half. 

To a nation gone mad with megalomania, losses of a million 
and a half seemed cheap stakes for a peculiarly grand and glori- 
ous gamble. The Reichstag applauded the plan. And when 
news of the enterprise spread among the German people, a wave 
of delirious enthusiasm surged across the Fatherland. Editorials 
in the patriotic press and speeches of Junkers and bureaucrats, 
of chancellor and Emperor, assumed a new and fateful truculence. 

So far as Ludendorff and Hindenburg were concerned, their 
madness did not lack method. Assured of enthusiastic popular 
sympathy with their purpose of making a supreme effort to 
obtain a speedy military decision on the Western Front, they 
proceeded to devise strategic plans with rare judgment and dis- 
cernment. Their main plan was simplicity itself. They would 
strike with all their might at what was assumed to be the weakest 
spot in the Allied line, the valley of the Somme, where the British 
forces under Field Marshal Haig joined the French forces under 
General Petain. Breaking through at this pivotal point, they 
would isolate the British army by rolling it up from its right and 
pinning it to an intrenched camp between the Somme and the 
Channel. This done, they would hold it with few troops, swing 
round on the French, and put them out of action. If all went 
well and fast, the Americans, by the time they were really ready 



302 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

to assist the French and British, would find no British or French 
to assist ; they would not fight Germany alone ; and they would 
promptly come to terms. 

In carrying out this major plan of strategy, the Germans in 
March, 1918, possessed four advantages over the Allies. In the 
first place, they enjoyed numerical superiority, thanks to the 
transfer of divisions from Russia, from Italy, and from the 
Balkans. Secondly, since they occupied interior lines and since 
the most intricate railway network of France was inside their 
own front, they were in a better geographical position ; they 
could concentrate at will in almost any angle of the huge salient 
running from the sea to La Fere and from La Fere to Verdun, 
and until they actually attacked they could keep the enemy in 
ignorance as to which side of the salient they proposed to strike ; 
simultaneously with the same force they could threaten the 
French in Champagne and the British in Picardy. Thirdly, in 
conducting the offensive the Germans were subject to a single 
supreme authority, which could treat the whole front as a unit 
and subordinate the needs of one sector to those of another, 
whereas the Allies were still capable of that unfortunate fumbling 
which must be a characteristic of the division of the supreme 
command between equal and independent generals of different 
nationality. Finally, the Germans had developed more per- 
fectly than the Allies the new tactics of surprise attack and 
"infiltration," by means of which open warfare might be restored 
and chances increased of winning an early decision. 

Just what these new tactics were upon which Ludendorff relied 
for the success of Germany's supreme effort, may best be gathered 
from the interesting description of them by an acknowledged 
expert and critic : "The first point was the absence of any pre- 
liminary massing of troops near the front of attack. Troops 
were brought up by night marches only just before zero hour, 
and secrecy was thus obtained for the assembly. In the second 
place, there was no long artillery 'preparation' to alarm the 
enemy. The attack was preceded by a sharp and intense bom- 
bardment, and the enemy's back areas and support lines were 
confused by a deluge of gas shells. The assault was made by 
picked troops (Sturmtruppcn), in open order, or rather in small 
clusters, carrying light trench mortars and many machine guns, 
with the field batteries close behind them in support. The 
actual method of attack which the French called 'infiltrations' 
may best be set forth by the analogy of a hand whose finger tips 
are shod with steel, pushing its way into a soft substance. The 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 303 

picked troops at the fingers' ends made gaps through which 
others poured, till each section of the defense found itself out- 
flanked and encircled. A system of flares and rockets enabled 
the following troops to learn where the picked troops had made 
the breach, and the artillery came close behind the infantry. 
The troops had unlimited objectives, and carried iron rations for 
several days. When one division had reached the end of its 
strength another took its place, so that the advance resembled 
an endless wheel or a continuous game of leap-frog. 

"This method, it will be-seen, was the very opposite of the old 
German massed attack, or a series of hammer blows on the one 
section of the front. It was strictly the filtering of a great 
army into a hostile position, so that each part was turned and the 
whole front was first dislocated and then crumbled. The 
crumbling might be achieved by inferior numbers ; the value of 
the German numerical superiority was to insure a complete 
victory by pushing far behind into unprotected areas. . . . 
Ludendorff's confidence was not ill-founded, for to support his 
strategical plan he had tactics which must come with deadly 
effect upon an enemy prepared only to meet the old methods. 
Their one drawback was that they involved the highest possible 
training and discipline. Every detail — the preliminary as- 
sembly, the attack, the supply and relief system during battle 
— ■ presupposed the most perfect mechanism, and great initiative 
and resource in subordinate commanders. The German army 
had now been definitely grouped into special troops of the best 
quality, and a rank and file of very little. Unless decisive 
success came at once, the tactics might remain, but men to use 
them would have gone. A protracted battle would destroy the 
corps oV elite, and without that the tactics were futile." l 

Having worked out these new tactics and hit upon that 
stragetic plan which admitted of the fullest utilization of Ger- 
man advantages and Allied weaknesses, Ludendorff massed 
seven powerful armies on the front from the North Sea to Rheims. 
These armies were commanded and disposed as follows : (1) Gen- 
eral Sixt von Arnim, from the Sea to the Lys ; (2) General von 
Quast, from the Lys to Arras; (3) General Otto von Below, 
from Arras to Cambrai ; (4) General von der Marwitz, from 
Cambrai to St. Quentin ; (5) General Oskar von Hutier, from St. 
Quentin to the Oise ; (6) General von Boehn, from the Oise to 
Craonne; and (7) General Fritz von Below, from Craonne to 
Rheims. The first four were under the superior control of Prince 

1 John Buchan, Nelson's History of the War, vol. xxii, p. 19. 



304 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Rupprecht of Bavaria and the last three under that of the Crown 
Prince Frederick William. 

Everything was in readiness for Germany's supreme effort. 
It was to be the mightiest trial by battle that the world had ever 
witnessed, the final test of the Religion of Valor. And so as not 
to be entirely off stage in a modern production that promised 
to surpass and consummate the epics and sagas of primitive 
Teutonic folk-lore, the War Lord himself, the Emperor William 
II, prepared to betake his own anointed person to General 
Headquarters at Spa and thence to communicate to the obsequi- 
ously faithful staff of journalists who attended him, for the 
edification of his subjects and of posterity, his own inspired 
and ecstatic interpretations of the Apotheosis of Might. 

But the histrionic Emperor appealed to popular imagination 
in Germany far less than the burly Field Marshal von Hindenburg. 
It was Hindenburg's presence on the Western Front which 
silenced civilian critics and keyed up the morale of the soldiers. 
Throughout the Fatherland there was everywhere expectancy 
of big events. "Where is Hindenburg?" asked Vice-Chancellor 
Helfferich in an address on March 16, 1918; "he stands in the 
West with our whole German manhood for the first time united 
in a single theater of war, ready to strike with the strongest 
army that the world has ever known." 

THE DRIVE AGAINST THE BRITISH: THE BATTLE OF 

PICARDY 

On March 21, 1918, the Germans began the great battle 
which military experts of both sides believed would decide the 
Great War. They struck from points where the British lines, 
owing to the uncompleted battles of Flanders and Cambrai and 
the Allied failures at Lens, St. Quentin, and La Fere in 191 7, 
were relatively weak or could be out-manceuvered with superior 
force of men and munitions. And while they struck directly at 
the British, they opened fire at long range on Paris. 1 

The Germans took the Allies by surprise. Some attack in 
force was of course expected; but General Petain imagined it 
would be directed against the French armies in Champagne, 

1 In heavy artillery the Germans now surpassed themselves. Three guns, each 
weighing 400,000 pounds and capable of hurling 330-pound shells some seventy- 
five miles, they emplaced twelve miles northeast of St. Gobain, and with these they 
opened fire on Paris on March 23 and subsequently at fairly frequent intervals they 
bombarded the French capital. The gigantic guns amazed the Allies but did actual 
damage incommensurate with the expense incurred, the total casualties in Paris, 
after an expenditure of about four hundred shells, numbering only 196. 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 305 

while Field Marshal Haig judged from the preliminary artillery 
preparations that it would be delivered in the vicinity of Ypres. 
The result was that neither Haig nor Petain felt it possible to 




spare troops from the northern and eastern sectors to strengthen 
the central sector from Arras to the Oise. This sector was held 
from Arras to St. Quentin by the Third British Army under Sir 
Julian Byng, and from St. Quentin to the Oise by the Fifth Army 
under Sir Hubert Gough. Yet it was against this sector, particu- 



306 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

larly between Cambrai and the Oise, that the Germans inaugu- 
rated their herculean offensive. 

The weather favored the Germans and their new "infiltration" 
tactics to a very high degree. The attack was launched by the 
troops of Generals Otto von Below, von der Marwitz, and von 
Hutier, a little before five o'clock on the morning of March 21 
under cover of such a heavy mist and fog that it was impossible 
to see more than a hundred feet ahead. The outpost line was 
taken before the British were cognizant of the fact that the attack 
had begun. The Germans with their carefully trained Sturmtrup- 
pen and with their tremendous superiority of numbers soon forced 
the British second line and rushed on to the third and last line of 
defense. Here again the inequality of numbers ultimately told. 

By the second day of the battle Gough's army, outnumbered 
four to one, lost contact with the French on its right and gave 
way at several vital points. Retreat soon became rout and 
what had been a disciplined army was rapidly transformed into 
a struggling mass of disorganized humanity. The Germans 
were advancing from St. Quentin along direct routes west toward 
Amiens and southwest toward Noyon ; it seemed almost certain 
that they would succeed in driving a permanent wedge between 
the French and the British armies. They took Peronne, Ham, 
and Chauny on March 24, and crossed the Somme ; and on the 
next day they occupied Barleux, Nesle, and Noyon. Meanwhile, 
farther north, the army of Sir Julian Byng had been heavily 
engaged ; it had managed to hold its lines intact before Arras, 
but its right wing, embarrassed by the rout of Gough's forces, 
had been obliged to yield Bapaume and to uncover the road to 
Albert. 

March 26 was the decisive day of the German effort to isolate 
the British, for this day witnessed the closing of the gap between 
the British and the French. A French army under General 
Fayolle came up and established itself along the Oise and the 
Avre, joining the British at Moreuil, southeast of Amiens. At 
the same time a new British army was improvised from sappers, 
laborers, engineers, in fact anybody that could be found, and with 
this curious array General Sandeman Carey faced the Germans 
before Amiens for six days, fighting over unknown ground, and 
with officers in charge of men whom they had never seen before. 
Try as they might, the Germans could not capture Amiens. 

Failure to capture Amiens left the Germans in a rather difficult 
position. They had pushed a thirty-five-mile salient into the 
Allied lines, but the salient, bounded roughly by the Ancre river on 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 307 

the north and by the Avre on the south, was too narrow for com- 
fort. It was with the hope of broadening the salient that the 
Germans repeatedly assailed the armies of General Byng and 
General Fayolle. Byng lost Albert on March 27, and on the next 
day Fayolle lost Montdidier. And during the first week of April 
tremendous assaults were made from Albert against the Ancre 
line on the north, and from Montdidier against the Avre line on 
the south. 

Although local successes were won by the Germans, they were 
unable to achieve their immediate purpose of widening the 
salient materially. The chief reason for this was the time element 
which had permitted the British and French to bring up men 
and guns and thus to stabilize their new lines. A contributory 
reason was the fact that heavy rains turned the Somme battle- 
field into a hopeless sea of mud and interfered seriously with the 
Germans' transport system. 

In the first phase of the battle of Picardy, the Germans had 
regained nearly all the ground they held at the beginning of the 
battle of the Somme in 19 16 and besides had gained approxi- 
mately 1500 square miles. They had also taken 90,000 prisoners, 
1300 guns, and 100 tanks. Though they had suffered griev- 
ously themselves, they had probably inflicted even heavier 
losses upon the British. But the main German plan was frus- 
trated, at least temporarily : the French and British were not 
separated and both still held strong defensive positions. 

The Germans, as soon as they were checked before Amiens, 
launched a second gigantic offensive against the British farther 
north, between Arras and the high ground north of Ypres. 
Instead of trying to separate the French from the British, the 
plan here was to separate the British army at Ypres, commanded 
by Sir Herbert Plumer, from that at Arras, under Sir Henry 
Home. A successful thrust by the opposing armies of Generals 
von Arnim and von Quast would throw back Home's forces 
upon the British armies which had retreated to the Ancre and 
would isolate Plumer's army. Apparently the Germans hoped 
to create a gap in Home's command, as they had recently done 
in Gough's army, and then pour through it and advance to the 
Channel. An advance similar to that before Amiens would 
result in the capture of Calais, one of the chief bases of supply 
of the British armies. Should only half this distance be covered, 
the town of Hazebrouck would fall, and with its fall Ypres 
would become untenable and the entire railway system behind 
the British and Belgian armies would be dislocated. 



308 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

On April 9 the Germans attacked a small sector, held by a 
Portuguese division, between Armentieres and La Bassee, 
smashed it completely, and occupied Richebourg St. Vaast and 
Laventie. A gap of about three miles was thus created in the 
British lines, and through it poured German troops in ever- 
increasing numbers. On the next day they crossed the river 
Lys and occupied Armentieres and Estaires. On April 12 they 
took Merville, only five miles from Hazebrouck. The serious- 
ness of the British position was reflected by Sir Douglas Haig's 
order of the day: ". . . Many among us are now tired. To 
those I would say that victory will belong to the side which 
holds out the longest. . . . Every position must be held to 
the last man ; there must be no retirement. With our backs 
to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of 
us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the 
freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one 
of us at this critical moment." 

The next few days witnessed the stabilizing of the British 
lines southeast of Hazebrouck and the shifting of the chief 
German efforts to points northeast of Hazebrouck. On April 14 
the Germans took Neuve Eglise, close to Mont Kemmel, and 
two days later they completed the conquest of Messines Ridge 
by capturing Wytschaete. 

German occupation of Messines Ridge and assaults on Mont 
Kemmel placed the British at Ypres in a precarious position. 
In order to prevent a serious catastrophe, Sir Douglas Haig 
directed a withdrawal from Passchendaele Ridge, which had 
been captured by the British at a tremendously heavy cost in 
1917, 1 and which constituted an exposed salient northeast of 
Ypres. The surrender of Passchendaele Ridge was a terrible blow 
to British pride, but subsequent events proved that the resultant 
shortening of the British lines strengthened their general position. 
On April 18-19 French reserves arrived, and the British lines, 
both new and old, held against repeated German onsets. 

Mont Kemmel was the scene of extremely bitter fighting for 
three days, April 24-27. The Germans, prodigal of men as at 
Verdun, made frontal and flank attacks on the position, until 
by sheer weight of men and metal they compelled the British 
and French to relinquish the height. Nevertheless the losses 
suffered by General von Arnim's army were so great that he was 
unable to reap the fruits of his victory : he could not secure 
other hills that belonged to the same range as Mont Kemmel; 
1 See above, pp. 278-280. 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 309 

he was unable further to endanger Ypres. In the meantime 
renewed German assaults southeast of Hazebrouck, in the 




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vicinity of Bethune, not only failed, but were followed by Allied 
counter-attacks which won back some ground. The struggle 
on this front died down by the middle of May, 1918. 



3 io A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Thus ended the second great German thrust. The British 
again had suffered grievously ; they had lost Armentieres, 
Merville, and the ridges of Messines and Passchendaele ; they 
were now back to positions which they had held after the first 
battle of Ypres in 1914; of their holdings at the close of 191 7 
the Germans now occupied approximately 800 square miles. 
Yet the Germans, as in their first thrust toward Amiens, had 
failed to achieve their real ends : they had not isolated any 
British army, or plowed their way to the Channel Ports ; the 
Allies still dominated the strategic railway lines centering in 
Ypres, Hazebrouck, Bethune, Arras, and Amiens. Not even 
the Belgian ports were longer available as bases for German 
submarines, for, in the midst of Ludendorff's military efforts, a 
British squadron in daring fashion had sunk ships at the entrance 
to the harbors of Zeebrugge (April 23) and Ostend (May 10) and 
had thus partially closed them. 

In the midst of the great German drive against the British, 
the Government at London took steps to make good its heavy 
losses in men and to bolster up weakening English morale. On 
April 8, a new military service bill was introduced in Parlia- 
ment'; and its third reading was quickly carried by a majority of 
198. Thereby military service was imposed on every British 
subject who had been in Great Britain since 191 5 and who was 
between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five ; immunity for 
ministers of religion was withdrawn ; and, unlike the service act 
of 1 91 6, this measure was specifically extended to Ireland. 

Thus the German drive served to make British determi- 
nation more dogged than ever. But at the same time it served 
to render more difficult than ever the solution of the already 
highly perplexing problem of Ireland. For Irishmen objected 
to conscription — and with cause. It. will be recalled that with 
the sanction of the British Government an Irish Convention, 
representing all factions of the unhappy island except the 
Sinn Fein, had met at Dublin in July, 191 7, under the chair- 
manship of Sir Horace Plunkett, in an endeavor to reach an 
agreement on the home-rule question. 1 The report of the Con- 
vention's recommendations was made public in April, 1918, in 
three separate documents : the proposals for a scheme of Irish 
self-government, adopted by 44 to 29 ; a vehement dissenting 
statement by nineteen Ulster Unionists ; and a minority report 
of twenty-two Nationalists, who were unable to indorse the 
majority's fiscal recommendations. The general scheme of 
1 See above, pp. 262-263. 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 311 

proposed home rule was accepted by practically all the National- 
ists, all the Southern Unionists, and five out of seven Labor 
delegates ; only the Ulster Unionists were intransigeant. Be- 
cause of the attitude of the latter, however, the British Govern- 
ment at once rejected the Convention's recommendations and 
declared that it itself would proceed to fashion a new home-rule 
instrument, in the meantime applying the service act to Ireland. 
Immediately there was a hue and cry. The vast majority of 
Irishmen felt that again they had been duped by the British 
Government, that again they were at the mercy of English 
Unionists and Sir Edward Carson's Ulster garrison, and that 
again they were to be forced to fight for a Britain which per- 
sisted in denying them rights enjoyed by Canadians and Austral- 
ians and Boers. Nationalist members of the House of Commons 
ostentatiously quit Parliament, and at a meeting in Dublin on 
April 20 adopted a resolution affirming that the enforcement of 
compulsory military service on a nation without its assent con- 
stituted "one of the most brutal acts of tyranny and oppression 
of which any Government can be guilty." On the same day 
fifteen hundred Labor representatives met in Dublin and pledged 
their resistance to conscription. Two days earlier the Catholic 
bishops at a meeting in Maynooth had condemned the injustice 
of forcing conscription upon a people without that people's 
sanction and, while warning against rebellion or violence, had 
directed their priests to administer an anti-conscription oath to 
the laity on Sunday, April 21. This oath was duly taken by all 
classes of Catholic Ireland, including lawyers, bankers, and 
merchants, as well as farmers and workmen. Thus it transpired 
that all factions of Irishmen except the group of Ulster Unionists 
were united on a common platform and that Catholic bishops, 
Laborites, and Nationalists, — most of whom had been whole- 
heartedly loyal to the cause of the Allies, — now stood shoulder 
to shoulder with Sinn Feiners in opposing the increase, at Ire- 
land's expense, of British armies on the Continent. John Dillon, 
the new Nationalist leader, joined hands with Eamonn de 
Valera, the leader of the Sinn Fein. 

Faced by the imminence of rebellion, the British Government 
by an order-in-council suspended indefinitely the application 
of the Service Act to Ireland and at the same time postponed 
the formulation of any scheme of home rule. The results were 
painful and unfortunate in the extreme. Premier Lloyd George 
stated on May 2 that "the difficulties have not been rendered 
easier of settlement by the challenge to the supremacy of the 



312 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

United Kingdom Parliament which recently was issued by the 
Nationalist Party and the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in concert 
with the leaders of the Sinn Fein"; and throughout England 
the Irish were accused of base ingratitude and of treason to the 
Allied cause. Taking their cue from the attitude of English 
officials, the Ulster Unionists, under the guidance of Sir Edward 
Carson, became more truculent than ever toward the grant of 
home rule in any form. On the other hand, the bulk of Irish- 
men were not mollified by the appointment, on May 5, of Field 
Marshal Viscount French, a notorious Unionist and "strong- 
arm" man, as Lord Lieutenant of their country, nor by the 
military and police coercion under which their administration was 
now conducted ; from support of the moderate, pro-war National- 
ists and a program of autonomy, they rapidly veered toward 
support of the radical, anti-war Sinn Feiners and a program of 
complete independence. Between England and Ireland, and 
between Ulsterites and other Irishmen, the breach had been 
widened and deepened. 

The great German drive of March and April against the 
British led, however, not only to an unhappy resuscitation of 
Irish troubles, not only to courageous efforts on the part of 
Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen to increase their own 
man power at the front, but also to the taking of a step of the 
utmost practical significance to all the Allies. It was the uni- 
fication of the Allied command in France. That such a step 
had long been highly desirable admitted of no doubt, but it was 
difficult so long as British and French commanders — to say 
nothing of Italian generals — were jealous of each other. Ever 
since the United States had entered the war, President Wilson 
had urged upon the Allies unity of command as well as the pool- 
ing of resources, but beyond a meeting of the Inter-Allied Con- 
ference and the creation in November, 191 7, of a Supreme War 
Council, with strictly advisory functions, little in this direction 
had been accomplished. 

When the Germans launched their huge offensive in March, 
1918, General Pershing promptly offered the American troops 
then in France to the Allies for use in any way they saw fit, 
either to be used as an independent unit, or to be broken up 
and brigaded with the British or the French, or both. This 
self-effacement of the American commander, coupled with the 
defeat of General Gough's army and the resultant grave danger 
to the whole Allied Front, finally overruled the last objection of 
the British General Staff and the British public. On March 25, 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 313 

1918, Lord Milner and M. Clemenceau and Sir Henry Wilson met 
Sir Douglas Haig and General Petain at Doullens, midway be- 
tween Amiens and Arras. That conference, held amid the con- 
fusion of retreat and under imminence of dire disaster, marked 
in a real sense the turning-point of the Great War. The pro- 
posal for a supreme commander-in-chief, for a generalissimo of 
all the Allied forces, strongly put forward by Clemenceau and 
Milner, was welcomed by Haig and Petain. 

For the new post there could be but one choice — Ferdinand 
Foch. He was by universal consent the master mind among the 
Allied generals. He was the most learned and scientific soldier 
in Europe, and his greatness in the field had been amply demon- 
strated in the battles of the Marne and of Flanders in 1914, 
and in the battle of the Somme in 1917. On March 26 it was 
announced that this short, grizzled, deep-eyed man of sixty-five 
had assumed supreme control of the Allied forces in the West. 
Haig and Petain and Pershing became his lieutenants, and thence- 
forth the Allied Front in France and Belgium could be treated 
as a whole and reserves could be dispatched, regardless of 
nationality, from one sector to another, whithersoever at the 
moment they were most needed. 

It was the unifying of the Allied command which contributed 
potently to checking the German offensive against the British 
both at Amiens and at Ypres and Hazebrouck and to preventing 
Ludendorff from isolating the British from the French and forc- 
ing the former back to the Channel. But the supreme test of 
Foch's generalship was to come later. 

THE DRIVE AGAINST THE FRENCH: THE AISNE AND 

THE OISE 

Ludendorff had promised his fellow-countrymen that their 
supreme effort on the Western Front would bring decisive victory 
within four or six months. So far, in the two months from 
March 21 to May 21, some progress had been made toward the 
realization of his promise. A big salient had been driven into 
the British lines between Arras and La Fere, and a smaller salient 
had been made between Arras and Ypres. German casualties 
in the offensive against the British already totaled half a million, 
but these were only a half or third of what Ludendorff had indi- 
cated as the price of victory. He still had numerical superiority 
of effectives ; he was still operating on interior lines ; the advan- 
tage of the offensive was still his. Just as he had devoted two 



314 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

months to demoralizing the British and compelling the French 
to weaken their own lines in order to send reserves to a hard- 
pressed ally, so now he would consecrate a month or two to 
denting French defenses, destroying French morale, and driving 
a big, broad salient into central France. Then, when all enemies 
were reduced to impotence by his sudden, fearful thrusts, he 
could easily crown a marvelous campaign by occupying Paris 
and the Channel Ports. There was intense jubilation in Ger- 
many as there was genuine alarm in Allied countries. 

The terrain selected by Ludendorff as the starting-point for 
his decisive drive against the French was the heights of the Aisne, 
which had already been the scene of great battles in 1914 and 
1917. 1 This area was nearest to Paris; it was also the gate to 
the Marne, and an advance beyond that river would cut the 
Paris-Chalons railway and imperil the whole French front in 
Champagne and in the Argonne. Accordingly, the armies of 
General von Boehn and General Fritz von Below, lying between 
Laon and Rheims, were rapidly raised in strength until they 
comprised some forty divisions, twenty-five for the first wave 
and fifteen in reserve. And a great concentration of guns and 
munitions was effected. 

Never, perhaps, during the whole campaign did the huge Ger- 
man war machine move so noiselessly and so fast. On the 
evening of Sunday, May 26, all was quiet in the menaced area. 
Then at one o'clock on the morning of Monday, May 27, a 
staccato bombardment began everywhere from the Ailette to 
the suburbs of Rheims. At four o'clock the infantry advanced, 
and in an hour or two had swept the French from the crest of the 
ridge north of the Aisne. The odds were too desperate, and the 
few French divisions, taken by surprise, had no choice but to 
retreat. By nightfall General von Boehn's troops had crossed 
the Aisne and reached the Vesle at Fismes. They had taken 
large numbers of prisoners and an immense store of booty, and 
in the center they had advanced twelve miles. 

Yet there was danger in thrusting too narrow a salient into 
the French lines ; and advantageous further advance of the Ger- 
man center must depend upon the ability of the flanks to advance 
also. Consequently, during the ensuing days the Germans 
attempted to widen as well as deepen the salient : General Foch, 

1 There is evidence to show that Ludendorff himself was opposed to the drive 
on the Aisne, preferring to press the offensive against Amiens. He seems to have 
been persuaded by political factors to abandon his original plan and to strike 
towards Paris. 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 315 

on his side, hastily threw in reserves with a view not so much 
to staying German progress south from Fismes as to strengthen- 
ing the French positions at Rheims on the east and Soissons on 
the west. 

After a stubborn defense, Soissons fell on May 29 ; and the 
German center rushed on from Fismes to the watershed between 
the Vesle and the Ourcq and Marne. By the next day the Ger- 
man center stood on the Marne from Chateau-Thierry to Dor- 
mans, a distance of about ten miles, but to the northwest the 
utmost difficulty was experienced by the right flank in debouch- 
ing from Soissons, while to the northeast the left flank battered 
in vain at the gates of Rheims. 

Though they failed absolutely to widen the Marne salient 
on the east, the Germans succeeded, after extremely bitter and 
sanguinary fighting, in advancing some six miles down the Ourcq, 
as far as the village of Troesnes ; and they likewise enlarged 
slightly their holdings west of Chateau-Thierry. Early in June, 
however, French counter-attacks not only halted the German 
drive westward but actually recovered some ground. On June 6, 
American troops, cooperating with the French, gained two 
miles on a three-mile front northwest of Chateau-Thierry ; at a 
most critical moment these Americans appeared as a singularly 
ill omen to Teutonic projects. Would they come in force before 
Ludendorff could bring France and England to terms ? 

Loudly the Germans acclaimed the achievement of their 
latest drive. To date they had taken 55,000 prisoners and 650 
guns ; they had occupied 650 square miles of territory and had 
established another salient, this time at French expense, thirty 
miles deep ; they had lessened the distance of their lines from 
Paris from sixty-two miles to forty-four. But Ludendorff knew 
that the salient from the Aisne to the Marne was highly pre- 
carious ; it was peculiarly exposed to a flanking movement from 
Compiegnc ; and it simply had to be widened, strongly fortified, 
or abandoned. 

Consequently Ludendorff resorted to the plan of linking up 
the Marne salient with the Amiens salient which in March he had 
thrust into the British lines. If he could execute this plan, he 
would wipe out the huge bulge in his own line and capture the 
strategically important town of Compiegne ; and the river 
valleys of the Aisne, Oise, Marne, and Ourcq would then be 
available for a final converging attack upon Paris, the nerve 
center of France. 

General von Hutier's army, concentrated between Montdidier 



316 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and Noyon, opened an intense bombardment in the early morning 
of June 9, and at dawn attacked with fifteen divisions on a front 
of twenty-five miles. On most of the front von Hutier failed, 
for there was no element of surprise, and Foch was ready for him. 
The total advance on the first day was three miles and was only 
attained after frightful losses. On the next day the Germans 
advanced about three miles farther and captured, after grave 
losses, a few little villages. The Teuton penetration was now 
about five or six miles, and this was approximately the depth of 
their entire advance. The struggle was one of dogged resistance 
on the part of the French, and, for the Germans, the slowest 
and costliest progress, very different from the Aisne offensive a 
fortnight earlier. By June 13 von Hutier 's effort on the Oise 
practically ceased. 

In the meantime, American troops had been very active in 
the neighborhood of Chateau-Thierry. On June 10 they moved 
forward in the Belleau Wood and by the next day had captured 
all of it. They also crossed the Marne at Chateau-Thierry on 
scouting expeditions. 

After von Hutier had failed to reach Compiegne and thus to 
widen the Marne salient on the west, General Fritz von Below 
on June 18 made a desperate assault upon the defenses of Rheims, 
hoping thereby to enlarge the salient to the east. Though en- 
circled by assailants on three sides, Rheims held out most stoutly 
during the engagement, much aided by the fact that the French 
held the great massif of the Montagne de Rheims to the south 
and southwest. 

For the better part of a month after the unsuccessful attack 
upon Rheims, comparative silence fell upon the Western Front. 
It was obvious that Ludendorff was preparing still another 
mighty blow. It was obvious too that the Allies were utilizing 
their respite to the full : their armies were growing daily as the 
Americans came into line, and their commanders were concert- 
ing strategy and tactics wherewith they hoped soon to transfer 
the initiative from the Teutons to themselves. Already the 
German casualties were mounting fast to the limit which Luden- 
dorff had named as the price of victory ; already three months 
had passed by of the four which he had set as a time-limit. 
The next drive would in all probability be the last for the 
Germans. Meanwhile, the Austrians would make their ulti- 
mate drive against the Italians. 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 317 

THE DRIVE AGAINST THE ITALIANS: THE PIAVE 

Externally the condition of Austria-Hungary seemed auspi- 
cious in the spring of 1918. Her own territories were free of 
foreign invaders not only, but she was in military possession of 
Montenegro, a large part of Serbia and Albania, and a liberal 
slice of northeastern Italy, and the treaties of Brest-Litovsk 
and Bucharest had relieved her of the necessity of maintaining 
a battle-front in Russia and Rumania. But internally the 
situation was growing steadily worse. Austria-Hungary had 
never had any true national unity, and the separatist ambitions 
of her subject peoples had been waxing as the central authority 
waned. Military and diplomatic successes had not served to 
feed the hungry or to save the starving, and large sections of the 
population of the Dual Monarchy were on the verge of starvation. 
Allied propaganda was doing its work : there were frequent 
mutinies among Czechoslovak and Jugoslav regiments ; there 
were daily desertions both at the front and on the march. 

One hope remained to the Emperor Charles and his Govern- 
ment. It was that the Great War might be ended before de- 
moralization should find its sequel in disintegration and ruin. 
For a time in 191 7 the Emperor, supported by Count Czernin, 
his crafty foreign minister, had hoped to end the war and save his 
dominion by means of separate, stealthy negotiations with the 
Entente. His duplicity having been discovered at Berlin, how- 
ever, he was compelled to part with Czernin in April, 1918, and to 
reappoint as foreign minister the more strenuously pro-German 
Baron Burian. And lest the Entente might continue to cherish 
the notion that the Dual Monarchy was weakening in her loyalty 
to Germany, the Emperor Charles was obliged further to humble 
himself, to pay an ostentatious visit to the Emperor William II, 
and to conclude with him on May 12 a renewal and extension 
of the alliance between their countries. Henceforth Austria- 
Hungary was even more dependent than formerly on the good 
graces and military might of Germany ; with anxiety the govern- 
ing classes at Vienna and Budapest now watched the progress of 
Ludendorff's supreme effort in France. 

But Ludendorff had told the Austrian authorities in no un- 
certain terms that, while he strained every nerve to overwhelm 
the British and the French, they themselves would be expected 
to put Italy out of the war. This they must do unaided, be- 
cause he needed all German troops in the West; but this they 
could do, because they now enjoyed the great prestige and the 



3i8 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



advantage of position which had been acquired as results of the 
successful Teutonic drive of the preceding November from the 
Isonzo to the Piave, and because they were now unhampered by 
military exigencies on any other frontier. If they could vanquish 
the Italians finally, they would confer inestimable favors upon 
the cause of Mittel-Europa and they would be promoting im- 
measurably the stability of the Dual Monarchy. 

So the Austrians set to work preparing a supreme offensive 
against Italy. They brought reinforcements from the East 
and collected a large store of guns and material. They mem- 
orized and rehearsed the new German tactics of "surprise" and 
"infiltration." And they worked out an admirable plan of 
strategy : Field Marshal von Hoetzendorf , commanding in the 
Tyrol, was to break through the Allied positions on the Asiago 
Plateau, and at Monte Grappa and Monte Tomba, and then 




UULF 
OF YEX1CE 



march down the Brenta valley, and take the Italian armies along 
the Piave on the flank or in the rear ; simultaneously, General 
Boroevic was to seize the hill called the Montello, which lay 
roughly at the angle between the north and northeastern sectors, 
where the Piave leaves the mountainous country for the Venetian 
plain, and to "infiltrate" among the Italian defenders of the 
Piave, thereby directly menacing Venice. 

On June 15, 1918, at three o'clock in the morning, the Austrian 
"preparation" began on the whole front, and at seven o'clock 
the infantry charged, principally in two areas — in the plains 
on the twenty-five mile line between the Montello and San Dona 
di Piave, and in the hills on the eighteen miles between Monte 
Grappa and Canove. But Diaz, the Italian commander, was 
not "surprised"; his troops were ready and also his reserves; 
and it soon became apparent that the Austrian generals knew 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 319 

the theory of "infiltration" better than their soldiers knew its 
practice. Hoetzendorf's advance was checked almost at the 
outset, and within two days the Italians, with the aid of French 
and British detachments, had recovered all the ground lost in 
the mountains and some besides. 

Boroevic was a little more successful along the Piave. His 
troops effected crossings of the river at several points and seized 
the eastern end of the Montello, while lower down the Piave, in 
the vicinity of San Dona, they advanced five miles west of the 
river. On June 18, however, two events occurred of great im- 
portance. One was the arrival of Diaz's reinforcements and the 
resultant halting of the Austrian advance. The other was a 
heavy downpour of rain which rendered the Piave a swollen 
flood and thus cut off the Austrians on the western bank of the 
river and at the same time enabled Italian monitors of light 
draft to go up the river and shell the Austro-Hungarian positions. 
Five days later General Diaz inaugurated against the isolated 
Austrians a counter-offensive, which resulted in the capture of 
4500 prisoners. By the first week in July, the Italians not only 
had driven General Boroevic's forces back to their old positions, 
but, in some places, had secured ground which had been lost in 
191 7, notably the delta at the mouth of the Piave. 

The result of the drive against the Italians was that the 
Austrians had gained nothing. Actually they had been com- 
pelled to yield ground, and this with a loss to themselves of 
some 20,000 prisoners, seventy-five guns, and at least 150,000 
casualties. They had failed grotesquely, and their offensive 
power was at an end. Their morale was hopelessly lowered, and 
domestic revolt threatened. More than ever was Germany 
left to continue the struggle alone. 

On the other hand the Italians were jubilant. They had 
avenged the disastrous defeat of the preceding year, and their 
achievement strengthened their own morale not only, but of 
their allies also. Allied faith needed a sign, for at this very 
moment Ludendorff 's Final Drive was impending. 

Despite Austrian failure, the Germans had not yet lost faith 
in Ludendorff's ability to obtain a military decision. Only 
Richard von Ktihlmann, the German Foreign Secretary, ex- 
pressed doubt ; " the end of the war," he said before the Reichs- 
tag, on June 24, " can hardly be expected through purely military 
decisions alone, and without recourse to diplomatic negotiations." 
For such faint-heartedness Ktihlmann was scathingly assailed 
by the Pan- Germans and Junkers ; he resigned on July 9, and 



3 20 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

was succeeded by Admiral von Hintze. Jove-like Ludendorff 
was not to be hindered by cringing diplomatists from hurling his 
last mighty thunder-bolt. 

THE FINAL GERMAN DRIVE: THE SECOND BATTLE OF 
THE MARNE 

At midnight on Sunday, July 14, 1918, the anniversary of the 
fall of the Bastille, Parisians heard the booming of great guns. 
At first they thought it another air raid, but the blaze in the 
eastern sky showed that business was afoot on the battlefield. 
Then they knew that the last phase had begun of the struggle 
for Teutonic domination of their city and of their country. 

For a month and more, ever since the cessation of the drives 
from the Aisne and the Oise, Ludendorff had been making final 
preparations to achieve the victory which he had promised the 
German people. He had collected every reserve from every 
front on which there were German troops. He had overworked 
his whole transport system in a desperate attempt to bring up all 
available guns and munitions. His plan was to strike out from 
the uncomfortable salient in which von Boehn had been en- 
trapped, press across the Marne, and cut the important lateral 
railway from Paris to Nancy. Simultaneously von Mudra 
(who had succeeded Fritz von Below) and von Einen, with 
their armies, were to advance east of Rheims between Prunay 
and the Argonne. In this way Rheims would be enveloped and 
the French front would be broken beyond hope of repair. While 
von Mudra and von Einen, with the aid of German armies in 
Lorraine and in Alsace, ground the eastern forces of the French 
to bits on the fortresses along the Meuse, von Boehn would 
march on Paris down the valley of the Marne. At the right 
moment, when the fate of the capital hung in the balance, von 
Hutier and von der Marwitz would break through the Amiens- 
Montdidier lines and descend on Paris from the north. Then 
would Haig be finally separated from Petain, and Petain's 
armies would be severed, and Foch, the generalissimo of a lost 
cause, would be faced by defeat complete and cataclysmic, and a 
German peace would be imposed on the Allies. To this end, 
the coming struggle was popularly styled in Germany the 
Friedensturm, the "peace offensive " ; the Crown Prince Frederick 
William was put in nominal charge of it, and afar off the Emperor 
William II assumed a most theatrical pose. Everything was 
in readiness to resume the Battle of the Marne where it had been 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 321 

broken off in September, 1914. Ludendorff was a better strate- 
gist than Moltke had been, and the Germans had learned many- 
valuable lessons in four years ; on the other hand it was assumed 
that most of the French reserves had already been exhausted, 
and that what few Americans had arrived were too untrained 
to be dangerous. 

At dawn on July 15, 1918, the German infantry advanced 
to the attack. Von Boehn was immediately successful. His 
troops crossed the Marne at various points between Chateau- 
Thierry and Dormans, reached the heights on the south bank, 
and in the course of the day gained one to three miles on a frorft 
of twenty-two. Yet they failed to widen the salient :, on the 
southeast an Italian corps effectually barred the way to Epernay ; 
on the southwest, in the vicinity of Chateau-Thierry, American 
soldiers stubbornly contested the ground. These Americans, 
constituting the right wing of the French army of General 
Degoutte, first checked the German wave at Vaux and Fossoy, 
and then rolled it back, clearing that part of the south bank of 
the Marne and taking 600 prisoners. Such American behavior 
was ominous. 

East of Rheims von Mudra and von Einen encountered un- 
expected opposition from the French under General Gouraud. 
Gouraud's counter-bombardment dislocated the German attack 
before it began, and his swift counter-attacks checked their 
"infiltration" before it could be set going. By dint of the ut- 
most effort the Germans occupied the towns of Prunay, Auberive, 
and Tahure ; further they could not go ; Rheims they could not 
capture or isolate. By the third day of the offensive, von Einen 
and von Mudra were utterly exhausted. 

South of the Marne and southwest of Rheims, von Boehn on 
July 16 and 17 pushed hard toward Epernay. Yet he too used 
up his reserves in vain. At the farthest point his advance was 
only six miles beyond his original position. On July 18 the 
aspect of the whole front was altered, when the French and 
Americans began an offensive on their own account from the 
Marne to the Aisne, which was highly successful, and which 
changed a dangerous situation for the Allies into a more dangerous 
one for the Germans. 

Before Ludendorff had launched the final German drive, on 
July 15, General Foch was considering a scheme of counter- 
attack drawn up by General Petain in conference with Generals 
Mangin, Fayolle, and Degoutte. It was planned to take advan- 
tage of the narrowness of the German salient on the Marne, and, 



322 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

while von Boehn was struggling to widen it to the east, to assail 
it from the west between Soissons and Chateau-Thierry. For 
this purpose vast quantities of supplies were stored up in the 
Villers Cotterets Forest, and a great reserve army, the possibilities 
of which the Germans had scarcely foreseen, was gathered to- 
gether. 

The chief factor in General Foch's decision to inaugurate a 
counter-offensive at once was the unexpectedly prompt arrival 
and efficient training of American troops. At first the Allies as 
well as the Germans had been prone to overestimate the obstacles 
in the way of the early, active participation of the United States 
in the war. It was hoped by the Germans, and feared by the 
Allies, that the ruthless submarine warfare would hamper seri- 
ously the transportation of American troops to France and that 
such troops as might reach Europe could not be relied upon for 
front-line fighting because of their notorious lack of training and 

| experience. As a matter of fact the submarine warfare' was at 
no time insurmountable, and in 1918, thanks to the Anglo- 
American sea patrol and to German discouragement, it was be- 
coming rapidly less effective : against losses to Allied and neutral 
shipping in the second quarter of 191 7 totaling two and a quarter 
million tons must be set the combined losses of 1,150,000 tons in 
the first quarter of 1918, and 950,000 in the quarter from April 
to June, 1 9 18, while during the same period the shipbuilding 
programs of Great Britain and the United States steadily 
grew until in 19 18 the merchant vessels launched far exceeded 
in tonnage those destroyed. Moreover, Europe was astonished 
by the speed and safety with which American troops were trans- 
ported across the Atlantic. During the seven months of 191 7, 
from June to December, the number of American soldiers arriving 
in Europe averaged 27,000 a month; from January to March, 
1918, the average was 60,000 ; and as soon as Germany put forth 
her supreme effort against the British and French, the United 
States performed almost a miracle in rushing men to the defense 
of the Allies — 117,000 came in April, 244,000 in May, and 
276,000 in June. By July, 1918, more than a million American 

|Jxoops were in France. 

No less astounding than the speedy arrival of the Americans 
was the quickness with which they proved themselves real 
warriors. Training begun in the United States was completed 
in Europe ; and in April, 1918, the First Division had manned a 
sector of the front northwest of Montdidier. On May 28 this 
division had signalized the first American military success in the 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 323 

Great War, by capturing the village of Cantigny ; and in June 
the Second Division by their effective work in the Belleau Woods 
and near Chateau-Thierry had aided materially in checking the 
Teutonic drive from the Aisne to the Oise. Even these successes, 
however, did not fully convince the Allied generals that the bulk 
of the American troops were yet fit for major operations, and it 
was not until the supreme effort of the Germans on the Marne in 
July, when the French were in dire need of reinforcements and 
when General Pershing insisted that his soldiers could and must 
be used, that General Foch, relying upon the Americans as well 
as upon French and British, ordered the counter-offensive. 

On July 18, Franco-American troops, under the command of 
Generals Mangin and Degoutte, attacked on a twenty-eight mile 
front from a point west of Soissons to Chateau-Thierry on the 
Marne. The assault was made without artillery preparation, the 






apissons. 



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SCALE OF MILES 



Scene of the Last German Offensive: the Second Battle of the Marne 



advancing infantry being protected by large numbers of tanks 
and a creeping barrage. It took the Germans by surprise, and, 
as a result of it, General Mangin's forces between the Aisne and 
the Ourcq advanced five miles and reached the heights south 
of Soissons, while General Degoutte's army, between the Ourcq 
and the Marne, captured Torcy and threatened Chateau-Thierry. 
Chateau-Thierry was evacuated on July 21, and on the same 
day Franco-American troops crossed the Marne and advanced 



324 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

three or four miles toward the Ourcq. The Germans were in 
retreat but they were fighting stubbornly as they went. On 
July 28 the Allies crossed the Ourcq and took Fere-en-Tardenois. 
Most bitterly did the Prussian Guards contest further advance 
north of the Ourcq : Sergy and Seringes changed hands several 
times before remaining in the possession of the victorious Ameri- 
cans. On August 3 the French reentered Soissons in triumph, 
and on the next day the Allies recovered more than fifty villages, 
including Fismes. The Germans were now completely behind 
the Aisne-Vesle line. Their supreme effort had been a gigantic 
failure. In two weeks the Allies had recovered the districts of 
Valois and Tardenois and taken more than 40,000 prisoners. On 
August 6, 1 9 18, General Foch was named a marshal of France, 
"in order to consecrate for the future," said Premier Clemenceau, 
" the authority of the great soldier who is called to lead the armies 
of the Entente to final victory." 

The Second Battle of the Marne, like the First, was a great 
Allied victory. In both combats the Germans had made des- 
perate attempts to overwhelm and crush the French armies and 
to occupy Paris ; in both they had been decisively beaten. But 
to the Teutons the Second battle, in 1918, was far more disastrous 
than the First battle, in 1914. In September, 1914, the Allies 
were so exhausted that they could not press their advantage ; 
the Germans could intrench themselves on the heights of the 
Aisne and hold their lines intact in France and Belgium while 
they proceeded to punish Russia. And the Allies, short of men 
and short of munitions, had to resign themselves unwillingly to a 
four years' vigil along a far-flung battle front. Now, however, 
in August, 1918, the Germans had shot their last bolt. They had 
suffered terrible losses ; they had no more reinforcements to 
bring on from Russia or any other place ; they were at last, 
thanks to their foolhardiness in bringing the United States into 
the war, outnumbered and outmanceuvered. Their munitions 
were of inferior quality ; their air service, at least on the British 
front, was distinctly inferior ; their supply system was in con- 
fusion ; their generals were discredited. Henceforth there could 
be no more German offensives. It was, in fact, very doubtful 
whether the Germans could make a defensive stand. 

The Allies, flushed with victory, did not rest from their labors 
when they had checked Ludendorff 's last drive and had turned 
it back across the Marne. They did not stop short even with the 
recovery of what they had lost in his earlier drive from the Aisne. 
The offensive, of which they had been deprived from March to 



GERMANY MAKES THE SUPREME EFFORT 325 

July, 19 18, they would now resume, and they would press it 
until Mittel-Europa sued for peace. In Allied countries defeat- 
ism disappeared and martial enthusiasm ran high. In the Cen- 
tral Empires, on the other hand, popular morale declined rapidly, 
for people who had been assured of a triumphant peace within 
four months had now to face the prospect of a peace imposed 
not by them upon their enemies but by their enemies upon them. 
It was a prospect hitherto almost inconceivable to the German 
mind. Yet such was the amazing turn of fortune in July, 1918, 
that whereas four months earlier Ludendorff had appeared as 
the dictator of Europe, four months later he and his Hohenzollern 
master were to be dishonored fugitives even from the Fatherland. 
The Second Battle of the Marne was the beginning of the end. 
They that had taken the sword were about to perish by the 
sword. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 
ALLIED VICTORIES IN THE WEST 

With the wiping out of the German salient from the Marne to 
the Aisne in July and early August, 1918, Marshal Foch had 
reaped the first fruits of the Allied offensive, but it was not his 
plan to allow any rest or respite to the harassed and discouraged 
Germans. On August 8 he struck his second great blow in an 
endeavor to "pinch" the extended German salient in Picardy, 
reaching out toward Amiens. First the British under General 
Rawlinson and the French under General Debeney attacked the 
Germans on the southern side of the salient, just south of the 
Somme river, and in three days drove them back fifteen miles 
in some places and an average of ten miles along the entire line. 
Montdidier was retaken on August 10, and before the end of the 
month Roye and Noyon were recovered. In the meantime, the 
French under General Mangin assailed the Germans on the line 
from the Oise, near Ribecourt, to the Aisne, near Soissons, while 
the British under General Byng successfully struck the northern 
side of the Picardy salient, making notable gains and inflicting 
heavy losses upon the enemy. Bapaume was regained on 
August 29, and Peronne on September 1. Farther north, in 
Flanders, the British army of General Plumer launched an offen- 
sive in August against the salient between Arras and Ypres and 
crowned its efforts on the first day of September by compelling 
the Germans to evacuate Mont Kemmel. 

By the end of August the results of Marshal Foch's energetic 
offensive were already appreciable. Since the middle of July the 
Allies had captured 130,000 prisoners, 2000 heavy guns, and 
14,000 machine guns, and had wrested from the Germans the 
greater part of the territory conquered by the latter in the sen- 
sational and sanguinary drives of the spring. The Teutons 
were now in most .places back on the Hindenburg Line, and their 
morale had suffered a blow from which it was destined not to 
recover. That 300,000 fresh American troops were pouring into 

326 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 327 

France every month was the chief of the fateful factors in Ger- 
man defeat and Allied triumph. 

The German Government was fully alive to the situation and 
thoroughly alarmed. A secret conference of civil and military 
officials, held at General Headquarters at Spa on August 14, 
under the presidency of Emperor William II, concluded from 
clear evidence at hand that, contrary to Ludendorff's earlier 




Principal Changes in Western Front from August, 1914, to November, 

1918 

assurances, Germany could no longer hope to win the war ; she 
must initiate peace negotiations with the Entente Powers. It 
would take time to formulate new peace proposals, to secure 
the sanction of Austria-Hungary, to present them through a 
neutral Power to the Allies, and to obtain final acceptance. 
During this delay attempts must be made, by means of false 
statements and high-flown proclamations, to buoy up the soldiers 
at the front and the civilians at home, for otherwise there would 
be real danger of a political and social revolution in Germany. 



328 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

To keep the armies intact and in possession of a large part of 
their former conquests in Belgium and France seemed to be the 
best guarantees against revolution at home and against a dis- 
astrous and crushing peace abroad. On this point Field Marshal 
von Hindenburg, Chancellor von Hertling, and the Emperor 
himself were agreed. Ludendorff himself was inclined to be 
panicky. 

The Allies were at this time in ignorance of the conference 
at Spa and of its momentous decisions. But they were in no 
frame of mind to help the Teutonic authorities stave off revolu- 
tion and obtain more favorable peace terms. And Marshal 
Foch was not the man to give an enemy any rest. What had 
been in July and August mere drives against German salients 
were enlarged under his direction, in September, into a vast 
battle covering the whole Western Front from the North Sea to 
the Meuse River. It was his purpose, by means of numerous 
offensives at various points, to force the Teutons to evacuate the 
line which they had spent years in intrenching and fortifying and 
which, comprising successive positions that depended on one 
another, extended from Dixmude, through Lens, Queant, Cam- 
brai, St. Quentin, La Fere, north of Rheims, and across Cham- 
pagne and the Argonne, to the Meuse, and was supported in the 
rear by the three mighty camps of Lille, Laon, and Metz. 

The first days of September were utilized by the French, 
British, and American armies in pressing the pursuit of the 
Germans and in liberating the territory up to the Hindenburg 
Line, in Picardy, between the Oise and the Aisne, and south of 
the Aisne. At the same time British troops under General 
Home, east of Arras, vigorously assailed the lines between 
Drocourt and Queant which constituted one of the most for- 
midable sectors of the German front. After some of the bit- 
terest fighting of the war, the British broke the line and pene- 
trated six miles along a front of more than twenty. Queant was 
taken by storm, together with a dozen towns and villages. In 
this operation alone more than 10,000 prisoners were captured. 
Lens was evacuated by the Germans on September 4, and the 
British settled down to a slow but steady advance toward 
Cambrai. 

Then quickly, at the opposite end of the long battlefield, east 
of the Meuse in the plain of the Woevre, began an American 
offensive movement against the St. Mihiel salient, which was a 
relic of German successes in the early months of the war. On 
September 12, after four hours' bombardment, American infantry 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 329 

under General Pershing assailed the southern and western flanks 
of the salient. The chief resistance was in the west, where the 




German positions were defended by the heights on the edge of the 
Woevre. Nevertheless so impetuous and so unflinching was the 
attack, that on the second day the forces advancing from the 



33Q A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

south and from the west met at Vigneulles, and the St. Mihiel 
salient was no more. By this blow seventy villages were de- 
livered and nearly 175 square miles of territory ; 16,000 prisoners 
were taken, and 450 guns; the great French railway system 
running through Verdun, Toul, and Nancy was freed ; a stra- 
tegically important position was obtained from which subse- 
quently an offensive might be launched against Metz and the 
iron fields of Briey ; and the Germans were shown in most dis- 
quieting manner that the American Expeditionary Force had 
reached a stage of development where it could be depended upon 
by the Allies to take full and decisive share in the war. 

Ever bolder and more determined and more varied grew the 
Allied offensives. The Germans could no longer risk the trans- 
fer of troops from one sector to another ; everywhere they were 
worn out and exhausted. Hardly had the St. Mihiel salient 
fallen when the Teutons found themselves assailed simultane- 
ously on five main sectors: (1) on September 18, the British 
army of General Rawlinson and the French army of General 
Debeney, under the superior command of Field Marshal Haig, 
inaugurated an offensive against St. Quentin, which resulted in 
the capture of that town on October 1 ; (2) on September 27, the 
British Generals Byng and Home moved against Cambrai, 
occupying it on October 9; (3) on September 28, King Albert 
and his Belgians, aided by a French army under General De- 
goutte and the British army of General Plumer, struck out 
between Dixmude and Ypres, and while the Belgians got close to 
Roulers, the British recovered Passchendaele, advanced on 
Menin, and threatened Lille; (4) on September 28, the French 
army of General Mangin pushed back the Germans between the 
Oise and the Aisne and regained the Chemin des Dames ; and (5) 
on September 26 an offensive of the utmost significance was 
begun on both sides of the Argonne, from the Meuse to Rheims, 
American troops attacking east of the Argonne and in the valley 
of the Meuse, and French forces under Generals Gouraud and 
Berthelot cooperating with them to the west, in Champagne. 

In all these sectors the Allies made rapid progress despite 
stubborn resistance and repeated counter-attacks on the part 
of the Teutons. By the end of September the Allied armies had 
captured from the Germans, since the turn of fortune on the 
Marne (July 18), 5500 officers and almost a quarter of a million 
men, besides enormous quantities of guns and munitions and 
stores. On September 30 the demoralization of Germany was 
strikingly manifested by the resignation of Hertling as Imperial 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 331 

Chancellor and prime minister of Prussia and by the succession 
to his important positions two days later of Prince Maximilian 
of Baden who had been a Liberal critic of recent governmental 
policies. Under Prince Max, Dr. W. S. Solf, the colonial secre- 
tary, was named foreign secretary, and a coalition ministry was 
formed of which two Socialist deputies, Scheidemann and Bauer, 
and two Centrist deputies, Groeber and Erzberger, were mem- 
bers. In an address to the Reichstag, the new chancellor set 
forth his program as follows : adherence to the principles set 
forth in the reply to the Pope's note of August 1, 191 7 ; a dec- 
laration that Germany is ready to join a league of nations if it 
comprises all states and is based on the idea of equality ; a clear 
statement of purpose to restore Belgium ; repudiation of peace 
treaties already concluded, if necessary to effect a general peace ; 
Alsace-Lorraine to be an autonomous state within the Empire ; 
radical electoral reform to be carried out immediately in Prussia ; 
strict observance of ministerial responsibility to the duly elected 
representatives of the nation; the rules as to the state of siege 
to be amended in order to assure freedom of meeting and of 
press as well as all other personal liberties. 

In October the new Government of Prince Max appealed 
direct to President Wilson for a cessation of hostilities. In this 
course it was heartened by an address delivered by the American 
president at New York on September 27, in which the purposes of 
the war had been restated and five principles laid down for 
the foundation of a League of Nations : 

"First, the impartial justice meted out must involve no 
discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and 
those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice 
that plays no favorites and knows no standard but the equal 
rights of the several peoples concerned ; 

"Second, no special or separate interest of any single nation 
or any group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the 
settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all ; 

"Third, there can be no leagues or alliances or special cove- 
nants or understandings within the general and common family 
of the League of Nations ; 

"Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no special, selfish 
economic combinations within the League and no employment 
of any form of economic boycott or exclusion except as the power 
of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world 
may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of 
discipline and control ; 



332 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

"Fifth, all international agreements and treaties of every kind 
must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the world." 

Throughout October a series of diplomatic notes was ex- 
changed between the United States and Germany, the latter 
being gradually led to perceive that no cessation of hostilities 
would be recommended by President Wilson to the Entente 
Powers until its Government had agreed unreservedly to accept 
the "Fourteen Points" of the President's address of January 8, 
1918, as well as his address of September 27, to put a stop to 
unrestricted submarine and other ruthless warfare, to evacuate 
occupied foreign territories, and to guarantee the destruction of 
autocracy and militarism in Germany. 

It was both President Wilson's diplomacy and Marshal Foch's 
continuous military blows that eventually caused Germany to 
yield to the inevitable. Throughout October, while negotia- 
tions were proceeding between the American president and the 
German chancellor, the Allied armies forged steadily ahead and 
the Teutonic forces reeled back before their onsets. In Flanders 
the group of Belgo-Franco-British armies renewed their attacks 
on October 14 on a vast front from Dixmude to the Lys and in 
the next few days took Roulers, Menin, and Courtrai, thereby 
obliging the Germans to evacuate Douai, Lille, and, soon after- 
wards, Tourcoing and Roubaix. In Belgium the progress of 
King Albert's victorious soldiers continued : Ostend and Bruges 
were reentered, then Zeebrugge ; the suburbs of Ghent and the 
Dutch frontier were reached ; the Lys was crossed. On October 
21 the British assailed the Germans east of Denain and cap- 
tured Valenciennes on November 2 and Landrecies two days 
later. Maubeuge fell on November 9, and on November n, 
the last day of fighting, the British gained Mons, the scene of 
their defeat and retreat in August, 1914. 

In the meantime, farther south the French under General 
Mangin had broken the strong "Hunding Line" of the Germans 
between the Oise, the Serre, and the Aisne, and by November 8 
they were at the outskirts of Mezieres on the Franco-Belgian 
frontier, while east of the Argonne Forest the Americans smashed 
their way through the supposedly impregnable "Kriemhilde 
Line," which extended across the Meuse from Grand Pre to 
Damvillers, and reached Sedan on November 6. At the same 
time General Gouraud, west of the Argonne, advanced through 
Champagne, capturing Vouziers and Rethel, and effecting a 
juncture with the forces of General Mangin near Mezieres on 
November 11. 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 333 

The Franco-American advance in the Champagne-Argonne- 
Meuse region threatened to cut the main line of communications 
between Germany and her armies in Belgium and northern 
France, so that even if the Allied armies had elsewhere been less 
successful than they actually were, Germany would have been 
doomed to decisive defeat in a very short time. The Germans 
thoroughly understood the strategic importance of the Meuse 
valley, and in this valley occurred during October and early 
November some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Much of the 
fighting was hand to hand, and the nature of the ground, with 










Vf2i-5*<f;v:tf p<-i \ 



The Franco-American Offensive on the Meuse and in the Argonne 



its ravines and gullies and woods, made it necessary to wipe out 
machine-gun nests with infantry rather than with artillery. 
Yet the Americans, as well as the French, acquitted themselves 
most admirably in this difficult, last campaign of the Great War. 
The Americans captured 26,000 prisoners and 468 guns ; the 
French took about 30,000 prisoners and 700 guns. It is esti- 
mated that the Germans, in their unsuccessful efforts to defend 
their main line of communications, lost 150,000 men. 

From July 18 to November n, 191 8, Allied arms were uni- 
formly and continuously victorious in all parts of the Western 
Front. The Teutons were crowded almost completely out of 



334 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

France and deprived of a considerable portion of Belgium. The 
Great War was practically at an end, for by November all other 
fronts — the Italian, the Macedonian, the Turkish, and the 
Russian — had crumbled, and Germany's partners in the enter- 
prise of Mittel-Europa had surrendered unconditionally to the 
triumphant Allies. Germany had staked everything on the 
Western Front, and Germany had lost. 

ALLIED INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA 

Germany, it will be recalled, had concluded the peace of 
B rest-Li tovsk with the Bolshevist Government of Russia in 
March, 1918. At that time the treaty was advantageous to 
Germany in three ways. First, it enabled her to transfer the 
bulk of her armed forces from the Eastern Front and to make her 
supreme effort in the West. Second, it promised to supply her 
in the not too distant future with much needed foodstuffs and 
with raw materials and markets for her manufactures. Third, 
it afforded her the opportunity to draw into the orbit of Mittel- 
Europa a number of new quasi-independent states, such as 
Ukrainia, Lithuania, Esthonia, Latvia, and Finland, from which 
she hoped to conscript reserves of soldiers as well as to obtain 
economic support and political prestige. 

Consequently, from March to July, 1918, while the German 
General Staff was devoting its chief attention and energy to pre- 
paring and launching successive mighty offensives on the Western 
Front against the British and the French, the German Govern- 
ment was not altogether unmindful of the situation in the East. 
In the name of upholding and enforcing the treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk German troops remained on Russian soil, cooperating 
now with the Ukrainians, now with the Lithuanians, now with 
the White Guards in Finland, now with the Turks in the Cau- 
casus and the region north of the Black Sea. 

In Ukrainia German soldiers backed Skoropadsky's dicta- 
torial regime with bayonets and suppressed peasants' revolts 
against it. In Latvia and Esthonia, German landlords were 
encouraged to declare the independence of the Baltic provinces 
and then to beg Germany's "protection." In May Emperor 
William II formally recognized Lithuania as a free and sovereign 
state on the basis of the action of a provisional government 
which in. the preceding December had proclaimed "the restora- 
tion of Lithuania as an independent state, allied to the German 
Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance, and by conventions 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 335 

chiefly regarding military matters, traffic, customs, and coinage," 
but William's declaration significantly assumed that Lithuania 
would "participate in the war burdens of Germany, which se- 
cured her liberation." In June German officers took charge of 
the Finnish army and, after deposing General Mannerheim, the 
patriotic Finnish commander of the White Guards, and sup- 
pressing insurrection and imprisoning numerous socialists and 
radicals, prepared to transform Finland into a monarchy under a 
German prince and in close alliance with the German Empire. 

Moreover, German army officers proceeded to collect Austrian 
and German ex-prisoners of war, recently released from prison- 
camps in Russia, and to utilize them in overrunning parts of 
Russia in which, according to the letter of the treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk, Germany had no right whatsoever to interfere. Thus, 
in the spring of 1918, Germans in cooperation with the Turks 
were rendering the Black Sea an interior lake of Mittcl-Europa : 
the Turks occupied Russian Armenia, Georgia, and other dis- 
tricts of the Caucasus, inflicting unspeakable atrocities upon the 
population, while the Teutons seized the ports on the northern 
shore of the Black Sea and a large strip of territory adjacent 
thereto. And far away, in Siberia, bands of Teuton ex-pris- 
oners were possessing themselves of the railways and other trade 
routes and likewise of valuable stores of munitions and food- 
stuffs. 

Against these flagrant aggressions the Russian Soviet Govern- 
ment at Moscow protested bitterly and repeatedly, but in vain. 
By playing the lamb at Brest-Li to vsk the Bolsheviki had not 
tamed the lion ; and when the lamb attempted to lie down with 
the lion, a not unusual fate overtook the lamb. Germany was 
devouring Russia, and Russia was helpless. The Bolsheviki 
were confronted by chaos at home as well as in foreign relations. 
By their repudiation of the Russian debt, by their radical social- 
istic ventures, and by their separate peace with the Central 
Empires, they had flouted and alienated the Entente Powers, 
so that from the Allies they could expect little aid or sympathy 
in their hour of need. And constituting as they did but a 
minority of the Russian people, they could hope to bring order 
out of chaos and still maintain themselves in power only if they 
accepted a partnership with the Germans. The Bolshevist 
leaders recognized that their sycophancy to Germany invited 
counter-attacks upon them by the Allies, but for the present the 
results of German hostility appeared more real and more men- 
acing. As Lenin stated before the Central Executive Com- 



336 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

mittee of the Soviets in May : "We shall do the little we can, all 
that diplomacy can do, to put off the moment of attack. . . . 
We shall not defend the secret agreements which we have pub- 
lished to the world; we shall not defend a 'Great Power,' for 
there is nothing of Russia left but Great Russia, and no national 
interests, because for us the interests of the world's socialism 
stand higher than national interests. We stand for the defense 
of the socialistic fatherland." Lenin professed belief that the 
defense of Soviet Russia was facilitated by what he termed "the 
profound schism dividing the capitalistic governments," by 
the fact that "the German bandits" were pitted against "the 
English bandits," and that there were economic rivalries between 
"the American bourgeoisie" and "the Japanese bourgeoisie." 
"The situation is," he explained, "that the stormy waves of im- 
perialistic reaction, which seem ready at any moment to over- 
whelm the little island of the Soviet Socialist Republic, are 
broken one against another." 

For the present, however, Lenin had to swallow his pride and 
restrain his rhetoric. The Germans were still conquering ter- 
ritories in France, and in Russia they were still sitting squarely 
in the saddle. Against the potent spurs of the All-Highest 
German Kaiser, mere diplomacy was exceedingly thin protection 
to the Bolshevist brute. Under Teutonic direction and dom- 
ination, and chiefly to Teutonic advantage, the Soviet Govern- 
ment was forced in June to sign humiliating treaties with Ukrai- 
nia and Finland. Lenin even had to acquiesce in the "self- 
determination" of White Russia, a few of whose people, in an 
assembly controlled by German agents, proclaimed (May 24, 
1918) an "independent republic" in federal union with Lithu- 
ania and under the protection of the German Empire. 

Yet Germany was not altogether successful in her efforts to 
exploit Russia politically and economically. The former empire of 
the Tsar was too extensive and too varied, and the Revolution had 
already introduced too much chaos into Russian politics and 
Russian industry, to admit of speedy and simple exploitation 
by any foreign Power. The Soviet Government might promise, 
under German pressure, to perform valuable services, but it was 
one thing to promise and another thing to perform ; and with a 
steadily diminishing production of soil and mill and mine, the 
Bolsheviki had the utmost difficulty in supplying the needy 
population of Great Russia with the bare necessities of life, to 
say nothing of exporting supplies to the hateful Teutons. Be- 
sides, there were considerable groups of persons and even sizable 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 337 

forces of armed men in Russia who opposed both the Teutons 
and the Bolsheviki ; this opposition would have to be overcome 
before Germany could expect to reap the full fruits of the peace 
of Brest-Litovsk. 

In May, 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian So- 
cialist Revolutionary party formally denounced the Bolshevist 
regime and called for a national uprising against the Germans ; 
and in June the Central Committee of the Constitutional Dem- 
ocratic Party did likewise. That popular feeling throughout 
Russia was inflamed against the Teutons was evidenced by the 
assassination of Count von Mirbach, the German ambassador at 
Moscow, on July 6, and of Field Marshal von Eichhorn, the 
German commandant in Ukrainia, on July 30. About the same 
time, the Cossacks of the Don took the field against the Soviet 
Government, as did also the forces of the " Provisional Govern- 
ment of the Caucasus"; and in Siberia several Conservative 
officers, such as General Alexeiev, General Semenov, Admiral 
Kolchak, and Colonel Orlov, organized loyalist bands and inaugu- 
rated counter-revolutionary movements. As early as February 
a "Temporary Government of Autonomous Siberia" had been 
proclaimed at Tomsk, but subsequently when this town was 
captured by Bolsheviki and Teutonic ex-prisoners, the seat of 
the Temporary Siberian Government was transferred to Harbin, 
in Manchuria, and then to Vladivostok. To add to the com- 
plications, General Fforvath, vice-president of the Chinese 
Eastern Railway, in July set up an independent anti-Bolshevist 
government in eastern Siberia. 

But the most effective check to Teutons and Bolsheviki alike 
was provided by a free-lance expeditionary body of Czecho- 
slovaks. At the time of the Bolshevist coup d'etat, in November, 
191 7, there were in Ukrainia and southern Russia some 100,000 
Czech and Slovak soldiers who originally had been in the service 
of Austria-Hungary, but who had gone over to the Russians in 
the hope of fighting for their national independence on the side 
of the Allies. Upon the conclusion of the treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk, an agreement was reached with the Soviet military 
authorities whereby these Czechoslovak troops would be allowed 
to proceed unmolested across European Russia and Siberia to 
Vladivostok, whence they would sail to join the Allies in France 
or Italy. At first the Czechoslovaks preserved a strict neutrality 
in the internal politics of Russia, and some of them actually 
made the journey over the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladi- 
vostok. But before their transportation had progressed far, 



w 



338 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

friction developed between them and the Bolsheviki and turned 
to open hostility ; and Trotsky, yielding to German representa- 
tions, sought to disarm them and to prevent them from aiding 
the Allies. 

Armed conflict began on May 26, 1918. The Czechoslovaks 
opened operations against forces of Bolsheviki and Teutonic ex- 
prisoners simultaneously in the region of the Volga and in 
Siberia. In Siberia, they defeated and ousted the pro-Germans 
from Irkutsk and Vladivostok, occupied several towns on the 
Amur river, and by the middle of July were in possession of 
1300 miles of the Trans-Siberian railway west of Tomsk. In the 
meantime, in June, they had captured Samara, Simbirsk, and 
Kasan on the Volga, had advanced to Ufa in the Ural Moun- 
tains, and had gained control of the chief grain routes and de- 
prived European Russia of the Siberian food supply. 1 The 
Czechoslovaks thus did heroic work in preventing the consum- 
mation of Teutonic designs on Russia and in arousing national 
opposition to the Bolshevist regime, but they could not hope 
with their slender forces to retain their hold on such a vast terri- 
tory unless they received active assistance from the Allies. 

For several months the Allies had been discussing the advisa- 
bility and practicability of armed intervention in Russia, with a 
view to reconstructing the Eastern Front and thereby lessening 
the force of Teutonic attacks in the West. But from a military 
standpoint the task was at any time difficult enough, and at the 
very moment when every available Allied soldier was needed to 
stay supreme German offensives on the Western Front it was 
peculiarly hazardous. Besides, from the political standpoint 
intervention in Russia was beset with difficulties, for the Allies 
were not at war with Russia and there were influential groups 
in Great Britain, and especially in the United States, who would 
bitterly resent any attempt to interfere in the domestic affairs of 
a presumably friendly Power. 

Nevertheless the spectacular exploits of the Czechoslovaks and 
the increasingly obvious interdependence of the Germans and the 

1 The death of the Tsar Nicholas IT was a curious and sorry incident of the 
fighting between the Russian Bolsheviki and the Czechoslovaks. The ex-tsar, 
who had been taken in August, 191 7, from his palace of Tsarskoe-Selo to Tobolsk, 
in Siberia, and thence transferred in May, 19 18, to Ekaterinburg, was killed at the 
latter town on July 16, 1918. The official statement issued on the subject by the 
Soviet Government said : " Ekaterinburg was seriously threatened by the approach 
of Czechoslovak bands, and a counter-revolutionary conspiracy was discovered 
which had as its object the wresting of the cx-tsar from the hands of the Soviet; 
consequently the president of the Ural Regional Soviet decided to shoot the ex- 
tsar, and the decision was carried out on July 16." 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 339 

Bolsheviki finally caused the Allied Governments to reach a 
tentative accord on the question of intervention. It was decided 
to dispatch two expeditionary forces to Russia : the one would 
be landed on the Murman coast and at Archangel in order to 
^defend the Murman railway ^> from Finnish-German attacks, 
prevent the establishment of submarine bases on the Arctic, and 
keep the large stores of munitions and supplies which had been 
purchased by the old Russian regime but never paid for, from 
falling into enemy hands ; the other would be sent to Vladivostok 
in order to police the Trans-Siberian railway and support the 
Czechoslovaks. The former would comprise British troops, 
with detachments of French and Americans ; the latter would 




consist of Japanese troops, with smaller contingents of Amer- 
icans, French, British, Chinese, and Italians. The United 
States Government, in embarking upon the enterprise, declared 
it did so "not for interference in internal affairs of Russia and not 
to distract from the Western Front," but "to protect the Czecho- 
slovaks against the armed Austrian and German prisoners who 
are attacking them and to steady any efforts at self-government 
or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing 
to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Mur- 
mansk and Archangel, the only present object for which Amer- 
ican troops will be employed will be to guard military stores 
which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces." 

1 The Murman railway had been built in 1916 from the ice-free port of Mur- 
mansk on the Arctic to Petrograd, in order to provide means of importing war 
supplies into Russia from Great Britain, France, and the United States, 



340 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

A naval landing had been effected by the British in March, 
1918, at Murmansk, the single ice-free port on the Arctic and 
the terminus of the recently constructed railway to Petrograd. 
Hither in June arrived the small Allied expedition, under the 
British General Poole, which proceeded to occupy the railway 
as far as Kem on the White Sea and to declare the Murman 
coast to be "Russian territory under Allied protection." On 
August 2 General Poole took Archangel, and five days later he 
organized, from among anti-Bolshevist Russian refugees, a 
regional "provisional government," headed by Nicholas Tchai- 
kovsky. These activities of the Allies in northern Russia served 
alike to embitter the Bolsheviki and defeat German schemes. 
Finland's enthusiasm for conquest of the Arctic littoral grad- 
ually waned and Germany's increasing preoccupation elsewhere 
made her aid negligible. By the second half of September Gen- 
eral Poole had advanced from Archangel fifty miles southward 
along the Dvina river, but farther he could not get. His 
forces were too few and his lines of communication too preca- 
rious. Merely to feed the starving population in the liberated 
region overtaxed his resources. 

In the Far East the Allied Expeditionary Force, under the 
Japanese General Otani, landed at Vladivostok in August, 1918, 
and within a month cleared the regions to the north, along the 
Ussuri and Amur rivers, and likewise the Trans-Siberian rail- 
way as far as Lake Baikal where a juncture was effected with the 
Czechoslovaks operating to the westward. Communication was 
thus opened between Vladivostok and the Volga, and the enemy 
in Siberia virtually collapsed. Yet the comparative smallness 
of the Allied forces, their lack of unity, and their endless civil 
difficulties about railway control and the recognition of "pro- 
visional" Russian Governments, which sprang up in their wake 
like mushrooms, prevented them from utilizing their successes 
in Siberia for a decisive drive against the Bolsheviki in European 
Russia. In particular, there was dislike of the Japanese, who 
constituted a large majority of the whole expeditionary force and 
who not only treated all Manchuria and eastern Siberia as their 
peculiar "sphere of influence" but also blocked for several 
months the project of the other Allies to intrust the repair and 
operation of the Trans-Siberian railway to a staff of experienced 
American engineers headed by John R. Stevens. It was not 
until the signing of the armistice on the Western Front, in 
November, 1918, that Japan, responding to American repre- 
sentations, consented to reduce her army in Siberia from 73,000 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 341 

to 25,000 and to turn over the whole Trans-Siberian railway to 
the American engineers. 

Ever since Allied intervention at Archangel and at Vladi- 
vostok, in August, what amounted to a state of war had existed 
between the Entente Powers and the Bolshevist Government 
of Russia. That Moscow and Berlin were coming nearer to 
conciliation and united action was evidenced by the signing on 
August 27 of three special agreements supplementary to the 
treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By the terms of these agreements, 
Germany conceded to the Soviet Government full liberty to 
nationalize Russian industry ; the Baltic states of Esthonia and 
Livonia were declared independent of Russia, though Russia was 
given free harbor zones in the Baltic ports of Reval, Riga, and 
Windau ; Baku (in the Caucasus) with its rich naphtha deposits, 
was left to Russia with the understanding that a portion of the 
naphtha should be at the disposal of Germany; the Bolsheviki 
promised to employ all the means at their disposal to expel the 
Entente forces from northern Russia, while Germany guaranteed 
Russia against attacks by or through Finland ; and Russia agreed 
to pay Germany an indemnity of one and one-half billion dollars, 
a small part of which would be assumed by Finland and Ukrainia. 

As the Bolshevist Government leaned more and more toward 
Germany, the Allies redoubled their efforts to coordinate and 
unify the anti-Bolshevist factions and " governments " in Russia. 
In September anti-Bolshevist members of the Constituent 
Assembly which had been elected in the autumn of 191 7, held a 
National Convention at Ufa and set up a new "All-Russian 
Government," with Nicholas Avksentiev as president and Peter 
Vologodsky as premier. With this government were gradually 
consolidated the Temporary Siberian Government, the Pro- 
visional Government of Northern Russia, and the regional ad- 
ministrations of the Urals and the Don, so that early in Novem- 
ber its authority extended over the greater part of Siberia and 
over portions of the provinces of Samara, Orenburg, Ufa, Ural, 
and Archangel, and its seat seemed securely established at Omsk. 
On November 18, however, a counter-revolutionary coup d'etat 
was executed at Omsk by Admiral Kolchak, the minister of war 
and marine in the All-Russian Government; President Avk- 
sentiev was "taken to an unknown place," several influential 
radical leaders, such as Victor Tchernov, minister under Keren- 
sky, were imprisoned, and Admiral Kolchak assumed a dicta- 
torship. Obviously the same factional wranglings and dissen- 
sions which had ruined Kerensky in the autumn of 191 7 were 



342 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

disgracing and paralyzing the anti-Bolshevists in Russia in the 
autumn of 1918. 

Nevertheless, in spite of manifold difficulties, Allied inter- 
vention in Russia, combined with the chaos in Bolshevist Russia 
and with the nationalistic strivings of lesser nationalities within 
the former empire of the tsars, effectually prevented Germany 
and Austria-Hungary from reaping the full fruits of the peace 
of Brest-Litovsk. Russia as a whole did not become a Teutonic 
satrapy or supply-station. And by the time that German arms 
were defeated on the Western Front German prestige had been 
. quite lost in the East. Had it not been for the continued chaos 
in Russia to which probably the Czechoslovaks and the Allies 
contributed, it might have been possible for Germany to have 
exploited the East politically and economically and thereby to 
have strengthened her resistance in the West and postponed the 
collapse of Mittel-Europa. As it was, Allied intervention in 
Russia hastened the inevitable. 

Nor should the role of the Bolsheviki in the final drama of 
Germany's downfall be passed over in silence. Whatever 
criminal deeds these fanatics were guilty of — and their 
guilt was certainly considerable — they at any rate indirectly 
were of great service to the Allies in paving the way for the 
destruction of German morale and for the overthrow of the 
Kaiser. If they were at times pro-German in deed, they were 
always in thought and word anti-Kaiser and anti-Ludendorff. 
From the moment of their assumption of power, in November, 
1917, they had never wearied of spreading propaganda in Ger- 
many, as well as in Russia, against Teutonic militarism and 
imperialism. To this end they availed themselves of the nego- 
tiations at Brest-Litovsk and of their "friendly" contact with the 
Germans throughout the summer and autumn of 1918. Their 
embassy in Berlin became a center of revolutionary agitation as 
sinister to the Imperial German Government as it was timely to 
the Allies. The Teutonic crash in November, 191 8, was due 
primarily, of course, to German military disaster in the West, 
but secondarily (and a little ironically) it might be traced to the 
Bolshevist Revolution and German "successes" in the East. 

ALLIED TRIUMPH IN THE NEAR EAST: SURRENDER OF 
BULGARIA AND TURKEY 

At the very time, in the spring of 1918, when Germany was 
making her supreme effort on the Western Front, her Near 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 343 

Eastern confederates — Bulgaria and Turkey — were engaged 
in diplomatic controversies that were undignified and annoying. 
The greedy and grasping King Ferdinand was insisting that the 
whole region of the Dobrudja, recently surrendered by Rumania, 
should be added to Bulgaria. The Young Turk regime at Con- 
stantinople, on the other hand, was stoutly maintaining that, if 
Bulgaria secured Dobrudja, Turkey must have compensations 
not only in the Caucasus, as a charge upon Russia, but also in 
Thrace, at Bulgaria's expense. King Ferdinand would not agree 
to another rectification of the Turco-Bulgar frontier, and con- 
sequently the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary, so 
as not to offend the sensitive Young Turks, decided not to hand 
over the Dobrudja to Bulgaria but to administer it themselves 
"pending final adjustment." To patriotic Bulgars this was 
interpreted as a threat by the Central Empires ; and the rela- 
tions between Sofia and Berlin were not made more cordial by 
the aid which the Teutons rendered the Turks in the Caucasus 
or by the backing which the Turks gave the Teutons in southern 
Russia and in the Dobrudja. The Black Sea might become an 
interior lake of Mittel-Europa, but the Bulgars feared it would 
become a lake dominated by a close Turco-Teutonic alliance. 
Bulgaria had entered the Great War three years ago, not in order 
to subject herself to an overlordship of sultan and kaiser, but 
simply to establish her own hegemony in the Near East. 

And now in the spring of 19 18 the Bulgarian army faced alone 
the Allied forces in Macedonia. The Austro-German divisions 
which had buttressed it from 1915 to 1917 had been called away 
to participate in the mighty offensives on the Western Front. 
There was still, indeed, the so-called Eleventh German Army, 
but its staff officers alone were German ; the troops were Bul- 
garian. In Albania a few Austrian battalions were opposing 
the Italians. But the entire Macedonian Front from Lake 
Ochrida to the y£gean was held by the Bulgars with sixteen 
divisions, or about 400,000 men. The prolonged inaction of the 
Allies at Salonica, who had made only partial and limited attacks 
in the vicinity of Monastir, the bend of the Tcherna, and Lake 
Doiran, kept the Bulgars under the illusion that the war would 
end in reciprocal lassitude and that they would be able to retain 
their sensational conquests of 191 5. 

As a matter of fact, however, Bulgaria was rotting from within. 
The common people had had enough of the war ; they were hungry, 
weary, and restless. King Ferdinand was growing unpopular. 
German influence was decreasing in proportion as the divisions 



344 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

lent for the victories of 191 5 and 191 6 decreased. And the army 
itself, worn out by war, by insufficient food, and by long inaction, 
would probably be unable to resist an unexpected and sweeping 
attack. Perhaps the new government of Premier Malinoff, 
which in June replaced the pro-German ministry of Radoslavoff 
at Sofia, was quite willing, before intrusting itself to the good- 
will of the Entente, that such an attack should come. A defeat 
would justify a separate and much desired peace. 

Allied confidence waxed as that of the Bulgarians waned. 
The composite Army of the East, better known as the Expedi- 
tionary Force at Salonica, grew ever more formidable. In the 
beginning it had been formed of French and British divisions 
from Gallipoli, and, although its effectives had been gradually 
increased from 1915 to 1917 and it had been further reenforced 
by Italian troops and by Serbian divisions which had escaped the 
frightful retreat of the winter of 1915-1916, it had not become 
strong enough to break through the Bulgarian front and join 
with Rumania when that nation entered into the conflict in the 
autumn of 1916. 

Later, however, in the winter of 1916-1917, Venizelos, having 
broken with the pro-German government of King Constantine, 
added three divisions of Greek soldiers who had rallied to his 
banner; and, after the deposition of Constantine, in June, 1917, 
the Greek army increased steadily to ten divisions, creating odds 
that would permit the Allies to undertake a great offensive 
movement in Macedonia. In July, 19 18, the Army of the East 
comprised some twenty-nine divisions — eight French, four 
British, six Serbian, ten Greek, and one Italian — or about 
725,000 men. 

In July and August, 1918, Marshal Foch, while raining blows 
on the badly shaken armies of Ludendorff in the West, did not 
lose sight of the Near East and of the effect which the elimina- 
tion of the Bulgars and Turks would have upon the decision of 
the war. With that clairvoyance and measured audacity which 
characterized his method of forcing victory, he planned a double 
operation in Macedonia and Syria, synchronizing precisely with 
his own smashing blows in France and Belgium, and intrusted 
its execution to two leaders — Allenby and Franchet d'Esperey 
— whose aggressive spirit he could trust. 

General Franchet d'Esperey, who arrived at Salonica in July, 
first obtained from his predecessor, General Guillaumat, precise 
information regarding the situation of the Bulgars, and then set 
to work preparing for victory. On September 14, 1918, the 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 345 



Bulgarian lines were heavily bombarded, and on the two suc- 
ceeding days infantry attacked, — British and Greek troops in the 
vicinity of Lake Doiran, on theright of the Macedonian Front ; 
French and Serbian forces, in the center, along the Vardar and 
the Tcherna ; and the Italians, on the extreme left, in Albania. 
So great was the Allied success, especially in the center, that 
within a week the Serbians advanced forty miles and threatened 
to isolate the Bulgarians operating north of Monastir. On 
September 24, French cavalry entered Prilep and found huge 
quantities of abandoned stores. The next day witnessed the 
capture of Babuna Pass and Ishtip, and the opening of the way 
for a quick advance upon Veles and Uskub. Meanwhile, the 
Greeks and British had overcome peculiarly stubborn resistance 



vlgr^leO R " AN I A 

V _ .0 Bucharest! scale of miie8 
y\ Crajova 7 r-r "' — ' — ' — r—i 




Macedonian Front at Time of Bulgaria's Surrender 

near Lake Doiran, and on September 27 they seized the Bul- 
garian town of Strumnitza. The road to Sofia was opened to the 
triumphant Allies. 

Then suddenly Bulgaria sued for an armistice and promptly 
agreed to an unconditional surrender. The armistice, signed at 
Salonica on September 30, provided : that the Bulgarian army 
should immediately be demobilized and its arms and equipment 
placed in Allied custody; that all Greek and Serbian territory 
still occupied by Bulgaria should at once be evacuated ; that all 
Bulgarian means of transport, including railways and ships on 
the Danube, should be put at the Allies' disposal ; that her terri- 
tory should be available for their operations ; and that strategic 
points in Bulgaria should be occupied by British, French, or 
Italian troops. The bubble of Bulgarian pretension was pricked, 
and its bursting brought consternation to the Central Empires 
and to Turkey. 

On October 4, tricky King Ferdinand, despised alike by the 
Teutons and the Allies and threatened by his own people whom 
he had misled and deceived, abdicated in favor of his son, the 



346 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Crown Prince Boris, and withdrew to his private estates in 
Hungary. Allied forces proceeded in triumph to the Danube, 
meeting with no resistance except from broken Austro-German 
fragments. On October 12 the Serbians entered Nish, their 
ancient capital. There had been a brilliant naval raid on 
Durazzo by Italian and British warships on October 2 ; on 
October 7 the Italians occupied El Bassan, and a week later they 
took Durazzo. On October 19, only about a month after the 
launching of the Macedonian offensive, the Allies reached the 
shore of the Danube. Late in October Montenegro was cleared 
of Austrians and Bosnia was invaded ; and early in November 
Belgrade was reoccupied. 

The liberation of the Balkan states south of the Danube had 
immediate consequences of far-reaching importance. It en- 
couraged the Rumanians to disregard the peace of Bucharest 
which their government had concluded in March with the 
Central Empires and to reenter the war on the side of the Allies. 
It enabled General Franchet d'Esperey to carry the contest into 
Rumania and southern Russia not only, but also to menace the 
now exposed southern border of Austria-Hungary. In this way 
the subject nationalities of the Dual Monarchy were put in a 
new position of vantage in their struggle for independence. 
From the signing of the armistice at Salonica, the old Habs- 
burg Empire was doomed ; Austrian aggression against Serbia 
was transformed by the act of Austria's confederate, as by a sort 
of poetic justice, into Serbian triumph over Austria. 

Bulgaria's surrender menaced the integrity of Austria-Hungary 
indirectly; directly it threatened the speedy downfall and dis- 
solution of the Ottoman Empire. For the Balkan link in the 
Berlin-Bagdad Railway was now in Allied hands; Turkey was 
isolated from Mittel-Europa; and General Franchet d'Esperey 
was in a position to make a direct and unhampered attack by 
land upon Constantinople. 

Already the Ottoman Empire was in extremis. Ever since the 
loss of Bagdad in March, 191 7, Turkish morale had been steadily 
declining. Unfortunately General Allenby was unable immedi- 
ately to follow up his capture of Jerusalem, in December, 191 7, 
with a decisive campaign, by reason of the fact that his expedi- 
tionary force was depleted by withdrawal of British and French 
troops to reenforce the Allied lines in France which, as we have 
seen, were mightily assailed by Ludendorff in the spring of 1918. 
However, the Turks, fully engaged with the Arabs of Hedjaz, 
were powerless to take advantage of the temporary weakness 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 347 



of their most dangerous enemy ; and Allenby utilized the respite 
afforded him by capturing Jericho and the line of the Jordan and 
by strengthening otherwise his -hold upon Palestine. 

With the turn of fortune on the Western Front and with the 
arrival of reinforcements from India, and at almost the same 
moment as General Franchet d'Esperey drove against the Bul- 
gars, General Allenby resumed the offensive against the Turks. 
On September 19, 1918, he struck on a sixteen-mile front between 
Rafat and the seacoast, and cleared the ground for a sensational 
cavalry dash, which within thirty-six hours reached Beisan and 




Progress of British and Arab Offensive in Turkey, October, 1918 

Nazareth, far to the north, and broke up the Turkish armies 
between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Haifa and Acre 
were seized on September 23, and three days later the British 
arrived at the Sea of Galilee and occupied Tiberias. Turkish 
forces east of the Jordan were meanwhile being driven by the 
Arabs in a southerly direction and were thus hopelessly separated 
from their comrades west of the Jordan who were fleeing north in 
a mad rout. 

Allenby 's advance was now a rapid pursuit, without any 
frontal fighting on the part of the Turks. The British general, 
accompanied by the son of the Sultan of Hedjaz, entered Damas- 
cus on October 1 ; and Rayak, Beirut, Tripoli, and Horns fell 
in quick succession. On October 26 Aleppo was captured, and 
the German General Liman von Sanders, with the Turkish Gen- 
eral Staff in his baggage train, fled to Alexandretta. In five 
weeks the Allies in Palestine and Syria had moved their front 
three hundred miles to the northward ; they had taken 80,000 



348 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

prisoners and 350 guns ; they had destroyed whole Turkish 
armies ; and they had cut the much prized Bagdad Railway. 

To cap the climax of Turkish disaster, the British in Meso- 
potamia now moved irresistibly upon Mosul, while the Allies 
in Macedonia threatened Adrianople and even Constantinople 
itself. The " Sick Man of the East" was in his last throes. The 
Sultan Mohammed V had died on July 3, and his successor, 
Mohammed VI, now accepted (October 10) the resignations of 
Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and the other Young Turks who by 
espousing the Teutonic cause had brought their country to ruin, 
and consented to sue for peace. On October 14 the Porte 
appealed to President Wilson to use his influence to secure an 
armistice. Receiving no reply from the United States, the 
Turkish Government released General Townshend, who had 
been captured at Kut-el-Amara, and sent him to the head- 
quarters of Admiral Calthorpe, commanding the British naval 
forces in the ^E,gean, to ask that negotiations should be imme- 
diately opened for an armistice. Admiral Calthorpe outlined 
the conditions on which the request would be granted, and 
during the last week of October Turkish plenipotentiaries arrived 
under safe conduct at Mudros on the island of Lemnos. 

Here, on October 30, was signed an armistice which went into 
effect on the following day. Its main terms were the opening of 
the Dardanelles, Bosphorus, and Black Sea, the prompt repatri- 
ation of Allied prisoners, the demobilization of the Turkish army, 
the severing of all relations with the Central Powers, and the 
placing of Turkish territory at the disposal of the Allies for 
military purposes. 

German mastery of the Near East had lasted only three years. 
Throughout the Near East, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, in Persia, 
in Armenia, in Asia Minor, in all the Balkan states, and in Con- 
stantinople, the Allies were now masters. The solution of the 
Near Eastern problems rested henceforth not with the Central 
Empires but with the Entente Powers. For the unconditional 
surrender of Bulgaria and Turkey was followed straightway by the 
complete collapse of that keystone of Mittel-Europa, that Power 
which in 19 14 had precipitated the Great War — Austria-Hungary. 

THE COLLAPSE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: RESURGENCE OF 
OPPRESSED NATIONALITIES 

Long before the surrender of Bulgaria and Turkey, long before 
the German defeat on the Western Front, the Dual Monarchy 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 349 

faced disaster. Unlike her confederates, Austria-Hungary suf- 
fered less from foreign prowess than from internal weakness. 
Ever since the Russian Revolution, in March, 191 7, the task of 
dominating a majority of Slavs by a minority of Magyars and 
German-Austrians, under any theory of democracy or national 
self-determination, had become utterly hopeless. 

At first each of the subject nationalities, — Czechoslovaks, 
Jugoslavs, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), and Rumans, - 
clamored for autonomy within the Dual Monarchy, but as time 
went on they all demanded complete separation from German 
Austria and from Hungary. Each of the subject nationalities 
developed remarkable solidarity, the clergy and the university 
professors vying as a rule with the business-men, the peasants, 
and the artisans, in the furtherance of national interests. Sep- 
aratist propaganda was carried on in the open and by stealth. 
Loyalty to the Habsburgs was undermined. In such cities as 
Prague, Agram, Laibach, Cracow, and Lemberg there were 
increasingly frequent riots and demonstrations. Mutinies in the 
Austro-Hungarian army were everyday occurrences ; and many 
Czechoslovak, Jugoslav, and Polish troops deserted to the Allies 
and served the Allied cause in Russia or on the Western Front or 
in Italy. "National Councils" of the several subject nation- 
alities were organized in Paris, or London, or Rome, or Wash- 
ington; and these "provisional governments" not only fanned 
the flame of sedition within Austria-Hungary but strove to se- 
cure active Allied assistance in their efforts to disintegrate the 
Dual Monarchy. 

In 191 7 "disloyal" agitation had been less prevalent among 
Poles than among Czechoslovaks and Jugoslavs. The Poles 
of Galicia had always been treated rather liberally by the Habs- 
burgs, and the erection of a kingdom of Poland by Austro-Ger- 
man decree of November 5, 1916, had temporarily appeased the 
Austrian Poles and enabled Premier von Seidler to control a 
majority of votes in the Austrian Reicksrat. But in the winter 
of 1917-1918 Austria lost the support of her Poles, for she was 
obliged to agree to Germany's policy respecting Poland, and 
Germany's policy was to strengthen Ukrainia at Poland's ex- 
pense. Thus the Polish province of Cholm was incorporated 
into the new Ukrainian state, despite the vehement protests of 
the German-appointed Polish Regency at Warsaw (February 
14, 19 18) and the bitter imprecations of the Austrian Poles in 
Galicia. Thenceforth the Poles, as well as the Jugoslavs and 
the Czechoslovaks, were openly hostile to the Dual Monarchy. 



350 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

General Joseph Pilsudski, a great national hero and formerly 
quite pro-Austrian, directed such an agitation in Poland against 
the Teutons that for the safety of Mittel-Europa he was arrested 
and deported to Germany. Joseph Haller, a colonel in the 
Austrian army, deserted after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, with 
his Polish regiment, and, after joining the Czechoslovaks in 
Russia, made his way to Paris, where he assumed supreme com- 
mand of a Polish army fighting for the Allies in France. And 
when the Polish deputies in the Austrian Reichsrat united with 
the already numerous opposition of Czech and Jugoslav depu- 
ties, parliamentary government in Austria became impossible. 
The only session of the Reiclisrct during the Great War was 
closed abruptly by Emperor Charles and Premier von Seidler on 
May 4, 1918. 

The majority of the population of the Dual Monarchy were 
at last becoming articulate, and, what was far more significant, 
they were uniting in common opposition to the continuance of 
the Habsburg Empire. This was the burden of the Pan-Slavic 
Congress held at Prague on January 6, 1918, of a second Con- 
gress held at Agram on March 2, and of a third held at Laibach 
in July. But greater freedom of speech naturally prevailed out- 
side of Austria-Hungary than within ; and consequently the 
clearest statement of the aims of the subject peoples of the Dual 
Monarchy was made at the famous Congress of Oppressed Aus- 
trian Nationalities convened at Rome under the auspices of the 
Italian Government on April 10, 1918. This Congress, which 
included leading representatives of the Czechoslovaks, Jugo- 
slavs, Rumans, and Poles, unanimously adopted the following 
resolutions: "(1) Every people proclaims it to be its right to 
determine its own nationality and to secure national unity and 
complete independence ; (2) Every people knows that the Austro- 
Hungarian Monarchy is an instrument of German domination 
and a fundamental obstacle to the realization of its free develop- 
ment and self-government; (3) The Congress recognizes the 
necessity of fighting against the common oppressors." 

That the Congress at Rome faithfully reflected the sentiments 
of the subject nationalities in Austria-Hungary was amply 
demonstrated three days later by a noteworthy assembly at 
Prague. On this occasion the Reichsrat deputies of the Czech 
nation and those of the Jugoslav nation, the latter speaking in 
the name of the Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs, met and made a 
joint agreement, through an oath worthy of everlasting remem- 
brance, to suffer and struggle relentlessly to free their peoples 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 351 

from the foreign yoke and bring down into the dust the old 
imperialistic Empire, covered, as they said, with the maledic- 
tions of mankind. 

To the appeals of the oppressed Austrian nationalities the 
Allies did not turn deaf ears. Already, in 191 7, France had 
authorized the organization of Polish and Czechoslovak armies 
on the Western Front and had recognized them as belligerent 
units; and now, on April 21, 191 8, Italy recognized the Czecho- 
slovak National Council as a de facto government and placed a 
Czechoslovak legion beside her own troops on the Piave Front. 
On May 29 Secretary Lansing, in behalf of the United States, 
declared "that the nationalistic aspirations of the Czechoslovaks 
and the Jugoslavs for freedom have the earnest sympathy 
of this Government"; and a week later the sixth session 
of the Supreme War Council, meeting at Versailles and 
attended by the prime ministers of France, Great Britain, 
and Italy, adopted resolutions that "the creation of a 
united, independent Polish state, with free access to the 
sea, constitutes one of the conditions of a solid and just 
peace and the rule of right in Europe," and that "the Allies 
have noted with satisfaction the declaration of the American 
Secretary of State, to which they adhere, expressing the greatest 
sympathy with the national aspirations of the Czechs and Jugo- 
slavs for freedom." Of the complete independence of Czecho- 
slovakia, formal recognition was accorded by France on June 30, 
by Great Britain on August 13, by the United States on Septem- 
ber 2, and by Japan on September 9. No other course could 
honorably be taken by the Allies toward a country whose soldiers 
at the time were waging war against the Central Empires in 
France, in Italy, and most thrillingly in Russia. 

Under the circumstances the Habsburg officials at Vienna and 
at Budapest bent all their energies to the task of preserving some 
semblance of order in their dominions until such time as the 
Germans should have won the war and come to their assistance. 
They proclaimed martial law in Bohemia and in Croatia. They 
imprisoned "seditious" persons and endeavored to suppress 
"revolutionary" publications. They kept a fairly large army 
on the Italian Front, though they discovered to their chagrin 
that it was no longer fit for any offensive operations. They 
sent some artillery and a few regiments of infantry to aid Luden- 
dorff in his supreme effort on the Western Front. Most of all, 
for the success of the great German offensive in France they 
prayed ceaselessly and imploringly. There was little else that 



352 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

they could do. There was no other hope for them. German 
defeat would mean for Germany simply defeat; for the Dual 
Monarchy, it would signify dissolution. 

Despairingly the Magyars and the German Austrians wit- 
nessed the quick, sharp hammer-blows with which Marshal Foch 
during August and September was driving Ludendorff's mighty 
hosts out of France and Belgium. Still more despairingly they 
beheld the surrender of Bulgaria and the advance of General 
Franchet d'Esperey's armies, in October, to the Danube and into 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The nadir of their despair was reached 
when, on October 24, General Diaz, the commander-in-chief of 
the Italian armies, struck suddenly against their lines along the 
Piave and in the Alps. Their remaining armed forces were now 
so honeycombed with disaffection and sedition that they were 
incapable of making even a defensive stand. 

Italian armies on October 24-25, 1918, smote the Austrians 
in the Monte Grappa region, between the Brenta and Piave 
rivers, while a British unit attacked along the lower Piave and a 
French unit took Monte Seisemol on the Asiago plateau. By 
October 30 the Italians had captured Monte Grappa, with 33,000 
prisoners, and were driving the Austrians back along the whole 
front from the Alps to the Adriatic. 

With the fall of Monte Grappa the enemy army in the moun- 
tains was definitely cut off from the one in the plains, and both 
began to flee in increasing confusion. By November 1 the one 
in the south was in utter rout, and the Italians were already 
across the Livenza river, inflicting terrific losses on the fugi- 
tives. The whole stretch of country, in the mountains and on 
the plains, for a distance of seventy miles, was strewn with the 
bodies of Austrian dead. On November 3 the Italian War 
Office announced that both Trent and Trieste had been cap- 
tured and that Italian cavalry had entered Udine. In ten days 
the Austrians lost an immense quantity of material of all kinds, 
nearly all their stores and depots, and left in Italian hands some 
300,000 prisoners and not fewer than 5000 guns. 

Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary had bowed to the inevitable. 
On October 29, Count Julius Andrassy, who had recently suc- 
ceeded Baron Burian as foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy, 
notified President Wilson that his Government was ready to 
acknowledge "the rights of the peoples of Austria-Hungary, 
notably those of the Czechoslovaks and the Jugoslavs," and to 
make a separate peace without awaiting the outcome of Ger- 
many's negotiations, and he begged the United States to urge 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 353 

upon the Allies the cessation of hostilities. On October 31 an 
official Austrian mission, under a flag of truce, visited the head- 
quarters of General Diaz and offered unconditional surrender. 
An armistice was accordingly drawn up and signed on November 
3, 1918; and on the following day hostilities against Austria- 
Hungary ceased. The principal terms of the armistice were 
as follows : complete demobilization of the Austro-Hungarian 
armies and the withdrawal of all troops operating with the 
Germans, half of the artillery and equipment being delivered to 
the Allies ; evacuation of all territories invaded by Austro- 
Hungarian troops and likewise of all territory in dispute between 
the Austro-Hungarians on one hand and the Italians and Slavs 
on the other, such territory being occupied by the Allies ; Allied 
occupation of strategical points in Austria-Hungary and of the 
transport system of the Dual Monarchy ; withdrawal of all 
German troops from the Balkan and Italian fronts as well as 
from Austria-Hungary ; immediate repatriation of Allied pris- 
oners ; surrender of captured Allied merchantmen ; and delivery 
to the Allies of fifteen Austro-Hungarian submarines, three 
battleships, three light cruisers, nine destroyers, twelve torpedo 
boats, and six monitors, all other warships being disarmed ; and 
Allied occupation of Pola and control of the Danube. 

The irretrievable disaster of the Austro-Hungarian armies in 
Italy led swiftly, even before the conclusion of the armistice, to 
the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy. By the end of October 
the Government at Vienna had resigned and the empire was 
already disintegrating into independent states. Emperor Charles 
acquiesced in the inevitable by appointing Professor Lammasch, 
an anti-war Liberal, as head of a liquidation ministry to hand 
over the former imperial powers to the provisional governments 
of the several emerging nationalities. 

From the ruins of the Habsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia 
emerged at once. On October 18 its independence had been 
solemnly declared at Paris ; ten days later the Austrian Governor 
fled from Prague ; and on October 29 Dr. Karel Kramarcz, the 
local head of the Czechoslovak National Council, proclaimed the 
deposition of Charles as king of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and ' 
Slovakia, and the establishment of a free and united republic. 
At the end of October two delegations of Czechoslovak leaders — 
the one from Prague and the other from Paris — met at Geneva 
in Switzerland and drafted a constitution for the new republic,^ 
modeled in part after that of the United States, and chose Pro- 
fessor Thomas G. Masaryk, the "grand old man" of Bohemia, as 



354 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

provisional president. A Czechoslovak National Assembly, 
convened in Prague in November, ratified the choice of Masaryk 
as president and selected Kramarcz as prime minister. 

Jugoslavia was also becoming a reality. Over the Slovenes 
of Austria and the Croats of Croatia and the Serbs of Bosnia- 
Herzegovina, the Jugoslav National Council at Agram assumed 
control. On October 29 the Croatian Diet unanimously pro- 
claimed the deposition of Emperor Charles and the separation of 
the "kingdom of Dalmatia, Slovenia and Fiume" from Hungary. 
At the same time the Diet expressed a desire for union with 
Serbia and Montenegro. "The people of Croatia, Slovenia, and 
Serbia wish to have nothing in common with Austria and Hun- 
gary. They aspire to a union of all the Jugoslavs within the 
limits extending from the Isonzo to the Vardar. They desire to 
constitute a free state, sovereign and independent." For the ful- 
fillment of this desire, a provisional agreement was reached at 
Geneva, in Switzerland, on November 7, between Nicholas 
Pashitch, premier of Serbia, Dr. Anton Koroshetz, leader of the 
Jugoslav party in the Austrian Rcichsrat, and Dr. Anton Trum- 
bitch, president of the Jugoslav National Council in London. 
Although there were cultural and religious differences between 
the Croatians and Slovenes, on one hand, and the Serbs, on the 
other, and although the Slovenes in particular would have pre- 
ferred a republic to a monarchy,, nevertheless so great was the 
desire for national union that, in accordance with the arrange- 
ments effected at Geneva, the Jugoslav Convention at Agram on 
November 24 formally proclaimed the establishment of "the 
Unitary Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes." 1 Of the new 
kingdom — really a Greater Serbia — King Peter of Serbia be- 
came monarch, with Prince Alexander as regent, and with a 
coalition ministry including Pashitch as premier, Koroshetz as 
vice-premier, and Trumbitch as minister of foreign affairs. 
Against the union, King Nicholas of Montenegro alone held out ; 
his fate was sealed by the Montenegrin Parliament, which on 
December 1 deposed him and voted for the incorporation of 
Montenegro into the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. 

Apace the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy proceeded. 
Transylvania fell away from Hungary and Bukowina from Aus- 
tria, and both were prepared by nationalist agitators for union 
with Rumania. The Banat of Temesvar drifted away from 
Hungary and became the object of rival claims of Rumania and 

1 This action was confirmatory of the Declaration of Corfu of July 20, 1917. 
See above, p. 265. 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 355 

Serbia. And Galicia, the scene of conflict between Poland and 
Ukrainia, was a unit in repudiating Austrian rule. 

Even Hungary would no longer endure any form of union with 
the Teutons. Demonstrations at Budapest on October 28 inau- 
gurated a swift and comparatively bloodless revolution which 
put Count Michael Karolyi and his Independence Party in 
power. On November 2 Karolyi announced to the Hungarian 
National Council that the Emperor-King Charles had volun- 
tarily freed the Magyars from their oath of fealty and left them 
free to decide their future form of government. On November 
16 Hungary was formally declared a republic, with Karolyi as 
governor, and assurances were given of radical democratic 
reform. It was the end of the Ausgleich between Austria and 
Hungary. The Dual Monarchy was no more. 

In the meantime Vienna had become the center of a revolution 
which aimed to weld the Teutonic population of Austria proper 
and of the Tyrol into the "German State of Austria" under a 
national and democratic government. The movement began on 
October 30 with a demonstration of students and workmen in 
front of the Parliament building, when the president of the 
German National Council announced a new administration. 
"But without the Habsburgs !" shouted the crowd. An officer 
in uniform then called upon his fellow-officers to remove their 
imperial cockades, which was done "with enthusiasm" ; and the 
imperial standard, flying before the Parliament building, was 
hauled down. Even German Austria was done with the Habs- 
burgs. 

Emperor Charles was ruined by a war which he did not make 
and by circumstances over which he had little control. Young, 
well-intentioned, and amiable, his respectable personal qualities 
were no proof against the vast elemental forces which took his 
realm from him and only left him the unenviable fame of being 
the last of the Habsburg Emperors. On November n, 1918, 
Charles issued his final imperial decree. "Since my accession," 
he said, "I have incessantly tried to rescue my peoples from this 
tremendous war. I have not delayed the reestablishment of 
constitutional rights or the opening of a way for the people to 
substantial national betterment. Filled with an unalterable 
love for my people, I will not, with my person, be a hindrance to 
their free development. I acknowledge the decision taken by 
German Austria to form a separate state. The people have by 
their deputies taken charge of the government. I relinquish 
all participation in the administration of the state. Likewise I 



356 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

have released the members of the Austrian government from 
their offices. May the German Austrian people realize harmony 
from the new adjustment. The happiness of my peoples was my 
aim from the beginning. My warmest wishes are that an in- 
terval of peace will avail to heal the wounds of this war." On 
November 13 the National Assembly at Vienna formally pro- 
claimed German Austria a republic. 1 

The Great War began in July, 1914, with the attack of the 
Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary upon the little Slav state 
of Serbia. By the autumn of 1918, however, Serbia was free and 
amply avenged. Within the former confines of the Dual Mon- 
archy were now the three independent republics of Czecho- 
slovakia, German Austria, and Hungary, while large portions of 
its erstwhile territories were added to Poland, to Italy, to Ru- 
mania, and to Serbia. The Habsburg Empire was destroyed ; 
it had taken the sword, and by the sword it had perished. 

Of Mittel-Europa all that remained was the Empire of the 
Hohenzollerns, and the way was now opened for an Allied 
advance into Germany not only through France and Belgium 
but through Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland. The 
Empire was tottering and the Hohenzollerns were preparing for 
flight. Germany, which in 1914 had not delayed to stand "in 
shining armor" beside her ally, could not delay in 1918 to follow 
Austria-Hungary in suing for peace. 

THE END OF HOSTILITIES: FLIGHT OF WILLIAM II 

Synchronizing with the surrender of Bulgaria and Turkey and 
the collapse of Austria-Hungary was the constant, forced retire- 
ment of German troops from France and Belgium. Late in 
October serious mutinies broke out in the German fleet, soldiers 
at the front refused to fight, Ludendorff resigned, Liebknecht 
and other Independent Socialists were inciting revolution, 
Emperor William was promising far-reaching democratic reforms, 
and Chancellor Prince Maximilian was begging President Wilson 
to grant an armistice. 

1 Austrian general elections were held on February 15, 1919, with four million 
men and women participating. The National Constituent Assembly, thus chosen, 
convened on March 4, its membership comprising 70 Social Democrats, 64 Christian 
Socialists (Clericals), and 91 adherents of minor groups. Karl Seitz, leader of the 
Social Democrats, was elected presidenl ; a coalition ministry of Social Democrats 
and Christian Socialists was formed under Karl Renner as chancellor; and a re- 
publican constitution for German Austria was drafted and subsequently adopted. 
Ex-Emperor Charles sought refuge in Switzerland in March, 19 19. 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 357 

Negotiations between the United States and Germany which 
began on October 5 ended on November 5, when President Wil- 
son informed the Germans that Marshal Foch had been author- 
ized to conclude an armistice with accredited German agents and 
that the Allies were ready to make peace according to the terms 
laid down "in the President's address to Congress of January, 
1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his sub- 
sequent addresses," subject to reservations on "Point Two" 
(the freedom of the seas) and to an explicit understanding that 
"compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to 
the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the 
aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air." The 
next day the German Government sent a mission headed by 
Mathias Erzberger to receive the terms of armistice from Marshal 
Foch. At Rethondes, six miles east of Compiegne, the dejected 
German envoys on November 8 met the stern generalissimo of 
the Allied armies and .^eard from his lips the hard conditions of 
the victors, conditions which without amendment they must 
accept or reject within seventy-two hours. At five o'clock in 
the morning of November n the terms of the armistice were 
finally accepted and signed. 

In accordance with the armistice, hostilities were to cease 
everywhere at eleven a.m. on November n. Within fourteen 
days Germany was to evacuate Belgium, France, Alsace-Lor- 
raine, and Luxemburg ; within a month she was to evacuate all 
territory on the left bank of the Rhine. Allied troops would 
promptly occupy these areas together with the bridgeheads at 
the principal crossings of the Rhine (Mainz, Coblenz, and 
Cologne) to a depth of thirty kilometers on the right bank. The 
treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest were to be renounced 
and German troops withdrawn from Russia, Rumania, Austria- 
Hungary, and Turkey. German submarines and warships were 
to be surrendered, and likewise five thousand locomotives, five 
thousand motor lorries, and 150,000 railway cars in good working 
order. The economic blockade against Germany would remain 
in force. 

The terms of the armistice, originally agreed upon for thirty 
days, were subsequently renewed from time to time and re- 
mained in effect, with minor changes, until the signing of the 
definitive treaty of peace at Versailles on June 28, 1919- In the 
meantime the Allies secured a strangle-hold upon Germany. 
Within ten days after German acceptance of the armistice, the 
Allied armies had passed beyond Brussels, had penetrated into 



358 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



Luxemburg, and had reached Saarbrticken and the Alsatian line 
of the Rhine to the Swiss border. King Albert of Belgium 
formally entered Ghent on November 13, Antwerp on November 
19, and Brussels on November 22. General Petain, commander- 
in-chief of the French armies, who was made a Marshal of France 
on November 19, entered Metz the same day ; and on November 
25 French troops under Marshals Foch and Petain triumphantly 







Territory Occupied by the Allies under the Armistice of November ii 

occupied Strassburg. Everywhere the advancing armies were 
welcomed by the inhabitants. The demonstrations by the 
people in Belgium and in Alsace-Lorraine were marked by undis- 
guised joy, in the one case that they were again free and inde- 
pendent after four years' indescribable sufferings, in the other 
case that they were returning to France after a compulsory 
separation of forty-eight years. Even in Luxemburg, which was 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 359 

believed to have strong German leanings, the American troops 
were cordially received. By the middle of December the French 
had advanced 170 miles, the British, 150, the Americans, 160, 
and the Belgians, 160. The British took over the administra- 
tion of the zone around Cologne, the Americans that around 
Coblenz, and the French that around Mainz. 

The first surrender of German naval vessels under the armis- 
tice was the delivery of twenty submarines to Admiral Tyrwhitt 
of the British navy off Harwich at sunrise on November 20. 
The following day nineteen more were delivered. The most 
spectacular event, however, was the surrender of the German 
High Seas Fleet to Admiral Beatty and the Allied armada off the 
Firth of Forth on the morning of November 21, the greatest 
naval capitulation in history. The ships surrendered were nine 
dreadnoughts, five battle cruisers, seven light cruisers, and fifty 
destroyers, representing a total tonnage of 410,000. Under 
British guardianship this mighty flotilla was interned at Scapa 
Flow in the Orkneys ; the vaunted German navy was at last in 
British hands, and Germany was defenseless not only in Europe 
but on the seas and in the dominions beyond the seas. 

The Teutonic debacle was complete. Sea power was gone. 
Land power was gone. Belgium was arising from her ruins. 
France was in possession of Alsace-Lorraine. Allied armies held 
the Rhine. To the East, Polish troops were advancing toward 
Posen and Danzig, while the Czechoslovaks were occupying 
Upper Silesia. Rumania denounced the treaty of Bucharest and 
reappeared as one of the Allies. Constantinople was at the 
mercy of the Allied fleets, and communications were opened 
between General Franchet d'Esperey, on the Danube, and Gen- 
eral Denikin, commanding anti-Bolshevist forces in southern 
Russia. The whole dream of Teutonic mastery of Russia was 
dispelled. Skoropadsky, the pro-German dictator of Ukrainia, 
was overthrown ; the pro-Ally General Mannerheim became the 
head of the Finnish Government; and the states of Finland, 
Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukrainia made haste to pro- 
claim their complete independence and to appeal to the Allies 
for assistance against the Teutons on one side and against the 
Bolsheviki on the other. In Poland the German-appointed 
regency resigned on November 14, 1918, in favor of General 
Joseph Pilsudski, who had recently been released from a German 
prison; in January, 1919, Pilsudski reached an agreement with 
the Polish National Committee at Paris whereby Ignace Pade- 
rewski, the celebrated pianist, became premier and minister of 
foreign affairs while he himself was made president. 



360 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

To the neutral countries of Europe the cessation of hostilities 
brought an intense feeling of relief. The Scandinavian countries, 
the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Spain could now reduce their 
armed establishments to a peace footing without fear of having 
their neutrality violated ; they perceived the early ending of the 
economic distress under which they had long labored ; and they 
promptly repressed whatever sympathies they may have had for 
Germany. For a time they were threatened in greater or lesser 
degree by the revolutionary agitation which followed in the 
wake of Mittel-Europa's collapse, but they managed to weather 
the storm, and Denmark was soon demanding the retrocession 
of northern Schleswig as her por f ion of the spoils of vanquished 
Germany. 

Such a catastrophe as was overtaking the Teutons could not 
leave intact either the territory or the political institutions of 
Germany. The German Empire had been builded in the four 
years from 1866 to 1870 by iron and blood ; by iron and blood it 
was destroyed in the four years from 1914 to 1918. Its subject 
nationalities — the Poles in Posen and West Prussia, the Czechs 
in Silesia, the Danes in Schleswig, and the French in Alsace- 
Lorraine — were now liberated from its yoke ; and the German 
people themselves were free within their restricted territories to 
resume the task of creating national unity at the point where the 
democratically minded deputies of 1848 had laid it down and 
resigned themselves to the acceptance of Bismarck's substitute 
of militarism, autocracy, and imperialism. 

On the eve of the conclusion of the armistice, when Germany 
first began to appreciate the extent of her defeat and humiliation, 
there were loud popular outcries against the Kaiser and insistent 
demands for his abdication. William hurriedly left Berlin and 
sought refuge at General Headquarters at Spa. But hither the 
clamor followed him. News came that Liebknecht and the 
Minority Socialists were inciting openly to rebellion and that 
mutinies were occurring in the navy. The south German 
states threatened to secede unless the Emperor should abdicate. 
Philip Scheidemann, the leader of the Majority Socialists, tele- 
graphed that he could no longer be responsible for the actions of 
his followers. On November 8 the Socialists at Munich, under 
Kurt Eisner, deposed King Louis, transformed Bavaria from a 
monarchy into a republic, and served notice on Emperor William 
that they could not tolerate royalist institutions. Frantically 
Chancellor Prince Maximilian wired the Kaiser that abdication 
must be immediately forthcoming. To all these civilian en- 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 361 

treaties William II might have turned a deaf ear, but when at 
last Field Marshal von Hindenburg and other weighty members 
of the General Staff bluntly told him that they could no longer 
insure his personal safety because the German army itself was 
seething with disloyalty and sedition, he hastily packed his bags 
and with a few faithful henchmen fled quite ingloriously on 
November 9, 191 8, across the frontier into Holland. On the 
following day he took up his residence in Count Goddard Ben- 
tinck's chateau at Amerongen. To Holland, also, fled subse- 
quently that other despised Hohenzollern, the Crown Prince 
Frederick William. It was a curious commentary upon the 
mutability of human fortune that the history of the German 
Empire was almost exclusively the history of two reigns — 
William the First (1871-1888), under whom the Empire had been 
reared in might, and of William the Last (1888-1918), under 
whom the Empire had fallen with a fearful crash. 

On November 9, 1918, the German Imperial Chancellor, 
Prince Maximilian of Baden, issued the following decree: "The 
Kaiser and King has decided to renounce the throne. The 
Imperial Chancellor will remain in office until the questions con- 
nected with the abdication of the Kaiser, the renouncing by the 
Crown Prince of the throne of the German Empire and of Prussia, 
and the setting up of a regency, have been settled. For the 
regency he intends to appoint Deputy Ebert as Imperial Chan- 
cellor, and he proposes that a bill should be brought in for the 
establishment of a law providing for the immediate promul- 
gation of general suffrage and for a constituent German National 
Assembly, which will settle finally the future form of govern- 
ment of the German Nation and of those peoples which might 
be desirous of coming within the empire." 

A general upheaval throughout Germany quickly followed 
the publication of Prince Maximilian's decree. Throughout the 
Rhenish and Westphalian industrial regions the movement 
spread like wildfire. Imperial emblems were torn down and red 
flags hoisted. With Socialists cooperated Catholic Centrists 
and Protestant Liberals. Hamburg, Bremen, and Leipzig went 
over to the revolution. While contested in some places, on the 
whole it was accomplished with an astonishing lack of disorder. 
In Berlin only a few hours on Sunday, November 10, sufficed for 
its complete triumph. Here a general strike was started at nine 
o'clock in the morning, and shortly afterwards thousands of 
soldiers, carrying red flags and accompanied by armed motor 
cars, began to pour into the center of the city. With them 



362 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

came workingmen from outlying factories, and a little later 
trains arrived bringing 3000 sailors from Kiel. Presently all 
these arrivals broke up into detachments and occupied the 
bridges, public buildings, street corners, and railway stations. 
Almost as by magic red flags appeared everywhere, and officers 
on the streets and barracks stripped off their cockades and 
epaulettes — in very few cases was compulsion required — and 
threw them away. Hundreds of Iron Crosses could be picked 
up from the gutters. The announcement from the front of the 
Reichstag building that Friedrich Ebert, a conspicuous leader 
of the Social Democratic Party, had become Chancellor and had 
chosen a popular ministry, was greeted with thunderous cheers. 
From the official news agency a message of democratic triumph 
was transmitted to the whole world. "The revolution has 
gained a glorious and almost bloodless victory." 

In those November days of 191 8 German crowns fell like over- 
ripe fruit in late autumn. The flight of the king of Bavaria on 
November 8 and of the king of Prussia on November 9 was fol- 
lowed immediately by the abdication or deposition of the kings 
of Wurttemberg and Saxony, the grand dukes of Baden, Olden- 
burg, Mecklenburg, and Saxe-Weimar, the dukes of Brunswick 
and Anhalt, and all the lesser princes. By the end of November 
every German state possessed a republican form of government. 

It was not until Chancellor Ebert was firmly established in 
power and Germany seemed thoroughly committed to repub- 
licanism that Emperor William II, at Amerongen, on November 
28, 1918, signed a formal abdication of the crowns of Prussia and 
the German Empire, and that Crown Prince Frederick W 7 illiam, 
at Wieringen in Holland, on December 1, definitely renounced 
all claims to the succession. On November 30 the Ebert Govern- 
ment decreed a provisional electoral law, by which a National 
Assembly should be elected by secret ballot of all Germans over 
twenty years of age, men and women alike, and this Assembly 
would determine the country's future political institutions. 

In the meantime Germany was tormented by economic dis- 
tress and torn by partisan strife. On the one hand a consider- 
able number of Junkers, pan-Germans, and confirmed mil- 
itarists, blaming the radicals for the disasters which had over- 
taken the nation and fearing the revolution would deprive them 
of their rights and privileges, conducted an agitation in behalf 
of a monarchical restoration. On the other hand the "Spar- 
tacus" group of Socialists, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa 
Luxemburg, were unwilling that the German Revolution should 



ALLIES TRIUMPH AND CENTRAL EUROPE REVOLTS 363 

stop short with the establishment of a democratic republic ; in 
imitation of the Russian Bolsheviki they held that there should 
be no National Assembly and that the body politic, as well as the 
Government, should consist of one class, the proletariat, while 
the intellectual class should be hired to work for it, and the cap- 
italists and landlords should be eliminated altogether. With the 
"Spartacans," the Minority Socialists, led by Hugo Haase, 
Eduard Bernstein, and Karl Kautsky, were inclined to coop- 
erate. The Spartacans were aided, moreover, by the ambas- 
sador of the Russian Soviet Government in Berlin, Karl Radek, 
and to a certain extent by Kurt Eisner, the Socialist premier of 
Bavaria; they championed "direct action" and fomented 
strikes and disorders. For a while it was feared in Allied coun- 
tries that Germany — and all Mittel-Europa — would follow 
Russia into Bolshevism. 

The Majority Socialists, however, under Ebert and Scheide- 
mann steered a middle course, suppressing the reactionaries on 
one hand and discountenancing the activities of the Sparta- 
cans on the other. They were resolved to erect a democratic 
republic by orderly processes, and in their resolution they were 
supported by the bulk of trade-unionists throughout Germany 
as well as by the Catholic Center Party, recently rechristened 
the " Christian People's Party," and by the "Democratic Party, " 
which represented a fusion of the radicals of the old Progressive 
Party and the left wing of the old National Liberal Party. 

On the eve of the elections to the National Assembly, in 
January, 1919, the Spartacans and other extremists, abetted by 
the chief of police at Berlin, made a desperate effort to seize the 
Government and introduce a reign of terror. The insurrection 
was sternly suppressed by Ebert's Government : several hundred 
rioters were slain ; Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were 
killed by loyalist mobs on January 15 ; and on January 19 the 
elections to the National Assembly passed off without untoward 
incidents. 1 

At Weimar, on February 6, 1919, the German National 
Assembly was opened. It included 164 Majority Socialists, 91 
Centrists, and 77 Democrats, — a total Government bloc of 
332, — while the Opposition was confined to 34 Nationalists 
(former Conservatives and reactionaries) and 24 Minority 

1 Subsequently there were spasmodic outbreaks of disorder in Germany. The 
assassination of Kurt Eisner by reactionaries on February 21 precipitated fairly 
serious civil war in Bavaria; and in March there were menacing situations else- 
where in the country. Ebert's Government managed, however, to retain the 
upper hand and to restore order. 



364 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Socialists (more or less in sympathy with soviet principles). 
Some seven "Independents" brought up the total membership 
of this historic body to 397. Among the members were twenty- 
eight women — veritably a remarkable sign of the new demo- 
cratic era. 

On February 11, 1919, the National Assembly adopted a 
provisional constitution for republican Germany and elected 
Friedrich Ebert as Provisional State President. At the same 
time Philip Scheidemann became chancellor, with a coalition 
ministry comprising seven Majority Socialists, three Centrists, 
three Democrats, and one Independent, and including such well- 
known men as Mathias Erzberger, Gustav Noske, Eduard 
David, and Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau. 

The flight of Emperor William II and the ensuing establish- 
ment of a democratic republic in Germany aroused Teutonic 
hopes that the Allies in dictating final peace-terms would be 
specially considerate and merciful. But such hopes were soon 
blasted. The Allies had suffered too much and too long from 
Hohenzollern militarism and imperialism and had had too many 
proofs of popular German devotion to that imperialism and mili- 
tarism, to be impressed by a twelfth-hour conversion of the 
German people to pacifism and democracy. As recently as 
March, 1918, Germany had dictated an outrageous peace to 
Russia and to Rumania, and if her armies on the Western Front 
had been as successful in the summer of 1918 as Ludendorff had 
predicted, she would have shown no consideration and no mercy 
to France or Great Britain or the United States. And in this 
event the bulk of the German people would probably have been 
as mute and as acquiescent as they had been in the negotiations 
at Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk. Knowing these things the 
Allies proceeded in much the same manner as they would have 
done if Kaiser Wilhelm were still in power : the German people 
might revolt and become republican if they liked — that was 
little or no business of the Allies ; it was the business of the 
Allies to refashion the map of Europe and dictate the peace- 
settlement in their own interests. "To the victors belonged 
the spoils," and the Allies were the victors. 







s E 

Candia- ' 



CHAPTER XV 

A NEW ERA BEGINS 
THE SETTLEMENT 

No series of events in the whole recorded history of mankind 
had proved so cataclysmic, in a like period of time, as the Great 
War, which began on July 28, 1914, with Austria's attack on 
Serbia and virtually closed on November 11, 19 18, with the armis- 
tice between Germany and the Allies. In politics, in economics, 
in society, Europe had undergone a revolution and the entire 
world was in ferment. Yet out of the chaos must come order, 
out of war must come peace. Just as the Great War had put 
an end to an epoch of international anarchy and fear, so the peace- 
settlement must serve to inaugurate a new era of international 
cooperation and hope. Upon the sanity of the settlement would 
depend the happiness of men and the true welfare of nations in 
future generations. 

The nature of Allied victory possessed for the peace-settlement 
an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, that the 
victory was complete and overwhelming made it possible for 
the Allies, if they chose to do so, to liquidate Mittel-Europa and 
settle once for all the litigious estates of the Ottoman Turks, the 
Habsburgs, and the Hohenzollerns. That the victory was 
achieved by a large number of nations, held together in a loose and 
informal federation, was disadvantageous, however, for each vic- 
torious Power had its own particular interests to subserve, and 
peace was likely to partake less of the character of ideal justice 
than of selfish compromise. 

Among the masses in all countries were large numbers who en- 
tertained the fondest and most glorious expectations of what the 
Peace Congress would do. According to them, it should lay 
broad and deep the foundations of a new world-order ; it should 
conduct its proceedings in the light of open day ; it should recog- 
nize to the fullest degree the right of every people to decide its own 
fate ; it should treat great and small nations alike ; truly it should 

365 



366 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

"make the world safe for democracy" ; it should finally end not 
only the Great War but all wars. 

But the diplomatists and statesmen of the several Powers, 
while professing the utmost devotion to these altruistic principles, 
had to face melancholy facts as well as roseate rainbows. They 
had to recognize, and make allowance for, certain very earthy, 
practical circumstances. In the first place, the war had been 
so long and so exceedingly bitler and the Teutons had been guilty 
of such heinous offenses against public and private morality that 
naturally in Allied countries there was a feverish and night- 
marish horror, in which some members of the governments 
and the bulk of the people shared, and which gave rise to an 
almost hypnotic fear of what Germany might do in the future 
if she were not crushed and terribly punished at the present. 
Doubtless in some quarters this psychosis went so far as to con- 
fuse justice with vengeance. 

Secondly, the war had entailed such grave economic losses 
and hardships that many Allied citizens, aware of the downright 
inability of Germany to make adequate financial reparation, 
clamored all the more for some tangible compensation from her 
in the form of territories and rights. 

Thirdly, the Allied Governments, though originally taking 
the sword in order to rescue civilization from destruction, had 
come in the course of the protracted conflict to wield that 
sword for a great variety of specific ends : France, to regain 
Alsace-Lorraine and to secure guarantees against subsequent 
German aggression ; Great Britain, to destroy the menacing 
sea-power of Germany and to strengthen her own empire ; 
Italy, to obtain Italia irredenta from Austria-Hungary and to 
assure a commanding position for herself in the Adriatic and 
eastern Mediterranean ; Japan, to extend her sway in the Far 
East and to establish a sort of "Monroe Doctrine" for China; 
Serbia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, to secure inde- 
pendence and in each instance to annex any lands in which its 
nationality was represented ; Greece, to obtain southern Al- 
bania, and Thrace and Smyrna — all the coasts and islands of the 
y£gean. Upon these specific ends the peoples of the several 
countries had set their minds, and their representatives at Paris 
could not afford to disappoint them. The United States was 
the only Great Power associated with the Entente which had no 
territorial ambitions and whose motives in this respect could be 
described as absolutely disinterested. 

Then too, the temporary league of free nations, which had 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 367 

finally destroyed Mittel-Europa and crushed the German Em- 
pire, had been builded up and strengthened by means of promises 
held out to prospective members at various times when the 
Entente was' hard pressed. These promises were usually made 
in the form of "secret treaties," such as those of 1915 by which 
Italy had been brought into the war, or those of 19 16 which had 
induced Rumania to join the Allies. In 191 7 a whole series of 
secret engagements had been entered into, guaranteeing definite 
territorial or economic gains to Great Britain, Russia, France, 
Italy, and Japan. To none of the "secret treaties" was the 
United States a party ; of the existence of some of them she was 
actually kept in ignorance until after the cessation of hostilities ; 
yet one of the celebrated "fourteen points" of President Wilson, 
on which the Allies consented to negotiate peace, was "open 
covenants openly arrived at." Here was a circumstance most 
trying even to experienced and calloused diplomatists. 

Between the actual situation imposed upon Allied statesmen 
by circumstances of the preceding four years and the hopes of 
enlightened public opinion in Allied countries there was ob- 
viously a wide chasm. Between the aims and ambitions of the 
several Allied Powers there was patent divergence and potential 
cause of conflict. To prevent the chasm from becoming un- 
bridgeable and the national divergences from leading to armed 
strife — either of which would surely redound to Germany's 
advantage and might easily enable the Teutons to escape just 
punishment for their transgressions — it was decided soon after 
the cessation of hostilities (November n, 19 18) to exclude Ger- 
many from the Peace Conference until the Allies themselves 
should have agreed upon the provisions of the final treaty of 
peace, until their own differences should have been amicably 
adjusted and the demands of their diplomatists squared as far 
as possible with the dictates of popular conscience. It was 
decided also, quite appropriately, that the Preliminary Con- 
ference among the Allies should be held in Paris, and the Defini- 
tive Peace Congress with the Germans at Versailles, the two 
historic capitals of France, — France which, perhaps of all the 
Allies, had contributed most, alike in suffering and in glorious 
deed, to the cause of Allied victory. 

January 18 was the date in 187 1 when the Hohenzollern king 
of Prussia, in the midst of a successful war against France, and 
surrounded by his triumphant generals and statesmen, had 
stood in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and been proclaimed 
German Emperor. Forty-eight years had since elapsed, and 



368 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

now at the close of an overwhelmingly victorious war against 
Germany, Allied statesmen and Allied generals assembled at 
Paris to undo the work of Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns. On 
January 18, 1919, the Peace Conference held its first session. 

It was a brilliant assemblage of the foremost men of those 
countries which had banded together to resist Teutonic ag- 
gression. There was Clemenceau, the grizzly and sagacious 
veteran of French Republican politics, the "Tiger" of his country 
and' of the Alliance; there was Marshal Foch, the organizer and 
winner of victory ; there was President Wilson, who had played 
a major role in the past two years of the war and who, in coming 
to Europe, had established a whol'y new precedent for American 
executives ; there was Lloyd George, the " little Welsh attorney," 
who from being the most feared and hated radical social reformer 
in Great Britain had become the most conspicuous patriot in 
all the dominions of King George V; Orlando, the Italian 
premier ; Marquis Saionji, twice prime minister of Japan ; 
Venizelos, the greatest statesman of modern Greece ; Kramarcz, 
premier of Czechoslovakia ; Bratiano, premier of Rumania ; 
Pashitch, premier of Serbia; Stephen Pichon, French minister 
of foreign affairs; Jules Cambon, who was French ambassador 
at Berlin when war broke out in 1914; Arthur J. Balfour, 
British foreign secretary and once upon a time attendant at 
the Congress of Berlin; General Botha and General Smuts, 
erstwhile Boer warriors against Great Britain but now stalwart 
defenders of the British Union of South Africa ; William Hughes, 
premier of Australia ; William Massey, premier of New Zealand ; 
Sir William Lloyd, premier of Newfoundland ; Sir Robert 
Borden, premier of Canada; the Maharajah of Bikaner and 
Sir S. P. Sinha, representing India ; Prince Feisal, the son of the 
Sherif of Mecca who had become the sultan of the new Arab 
kingdom of Hedjaz ; Robert Lansing, American Secretary of 
State ; Colonel House, special friend and confidential adviser 
of President Wilson ; Henry White and General Bliss, represent- 
ing the diplomatic and military traditions of the United States ; 
Baron Sidney Sonnino, Italian foreign minister continuously 
since 19 14 and an uncompromising advocate of Italian imperial- 
ism; Epitacio Pessoa, president-elect of Brazil and one of the 
foremost jurists of Latin America; Paul Hymans, Belgian 
foreign minister ; Van Der Heuvel, Belgian envoy to the Pope ; 
and Emile Vandervelde, the patriotic Belgian Socialist. At- 
tending all these celebrities were a host of more obscure but 
no less important "experts" -professors and publicists and 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 369 

cartographers and financiers and secretaries — ■ a host as necessary 
to the Peace Conference as privates to an army. And waiting 
upon them were numerous "missions" and " envoys" from 
racial or religious groups throughout the world, who sought 
favors or aspired to freedom : Russians, Koreans, negroes, 
Irishmen, Abyssinians, etc. 

The formal assembling of the Peace Conference on January 18 
had been preceded by almost daily conferences of the Inter- 
allied Supreme War Council and by several informal meetings 
of the President of the United States with the premiers and 
foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, and Italy, assisted 
by the Japanese ambassadors in Paris and London. At these 
meetings and conferences the procedure and general scope of 
the Peace Conference had been planned. 

The Preliminary Peace Conference, as organized, included 
seventy delegates from thirty-two states, distributed as follows : 
United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, five 
each ; Belgium, Brazil, and Serbia, three apiece ; Canada, 
Australia, South Africa, India, China, Greece, Hedjaz, Poland, 
Portugal, Rumania, Siam, and Czechoslovakia, two apiece ; 
and one each from New Zealand, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, 
Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, 
Peru, and Uruguay. At the opening session of the Conference 
in the Peace Hall of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just across 
the Seine from the Place de la Concorde, President Poincare 
of the French Republic welcomed the delegates with felicitous 
phrase, and then Premier Clemenceau of France was chosen 
president, while honorary vice-presidencies were bestowed upon 
Secretary Lansing of the United States, Premier Lloyd George 
of Great Britain, Premier Orlando of Italy, and Marquis Saionji 
of Japan. 

Thenceforth, until the presentation of the draft of the com- 
pleted treaty to the Germans on May 7, the Conference met 
on rare occasions, and even its sessions were largely perfunctory 
and ceremonial. The real work of the Conference was carried 
on by special committees of diplomatists and " experts" se- 
lected as needs arose for the consideration of such matters as 
"league of nations," "responsibility for the war," "reparations," 
"labor legislation," "international regulation of waterways," 
"financial questions," "economic questions," "territorial ques- 
tions," etc. Most of the work was conducted in privacy and 
secrecy, and only such committee reports were passed on to the 
plenary Conference as met the approval of the spokesmen of 



37© A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the Great Powers. At first the Great Powers maintained a 
"Supreme Council," consisting of the two ranking delegates 
from the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, 
to which was subordinated all the machinery of the Conference 
and before which all conflicting claims were presented. But 
the Supreme Council of Ten proved too unwieldy, and it gradually 
gave way to an informal Council of Five, including Japan ; then 
Japan was dropped from the inner circle, and Premiers Clemen- 
ceau, Lloyd George, Orlando, and President Wilson, known as 
the Council of Four, carried on the discussions on the most im- 
portant issues among themselves; finally, when on the eve of 
the conclusion of the treaty with the Germans Italy became 
temporarily alienated by the proposed settlement of Adriatic 
claims, and Orlando withdrew, the chief responsibility for the 
Conference devolved upon the "Big Three" — Wilson, Clemen- 
ceau, and Lloyd George. 

It was no easy task to reconcile differences of opinion and 
policy among the thirty-two delegations and to preserve a united 
front on the part of all the Allied and Associated Governments. 
President Wilson, who had set his heart upon fashioning a League 
of Nations, felt himself obliged to make repeated concessions to 
his associates in order to enlist their support for his pet project. 
For example, "freedom of the seas," of which he talked much 
before he went to Europe, quite disappeared from polite con- 
versation — it was a concession to British susceptibilities, and a 
concession gratefully received, for the British delegates at Paris, 
as soon as they were assured of the unquestioned control of the 
seas by Great Britain, and British management, through a 
"mandatary" system, of the bulk of the German colonies, be- 
came enthusiastic champions of the League of Nations and de- 
voted friends of President Wilson. To France President Wilson 
found it convenient to yield not only Alsace-Lorraine and various 
economic privileges in Germany but special financial and po- 
litical rights, for a term of fifteen years, in the strictly Teutonic 
Saar basin and the extraordinary guarantee of a new defensive 
alliance between France, the United States, and Great Britain — 
an alliance which in spirit if not in letter was contrary to earlier 
declarations against group alliances within the League of Nations. 
Furthermore, the German rights and privileges in Shantung, 
instead of being surrendered to China, were transferred to 
Japan, and the secret treaties which had been concluded in 191 7 
between Japan and the Entente were recognized and upheld, be- 
cause otherwise Japan threatened to withdraw from the Con- 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 371 

ference and to disrupt the League of Nations ; in this way the 
United States departed radically from her traditional Far 
Eastern policy of protecting China and permitted one of the 
weaker Allies to be despoiled by one of the stronger. In the 
case of Italy, which had the audacity to demand the cession, 
at the expense of Serbia, not only of all the territory pledged her 
by the secret treaties but the Adriatic port of Fiume also, Presi- 
dent Wilson stood his ground better, but the Italian delegates 
actually withdrew temporarily from the Conference and subse- 
quently secured a compromise. 1 

In addition to these difficulties, the diplomatists at Paris were 
confronted with perplexing boundary disputes among the lesser 
Powers. So intermingled were different nationalities in various 
parts of the ruined empires of Russia, Austria, and Turkey, that 
it was well-nigh impossible to draw frontiers for Poland, Czecho- 
slovakia, Rumania, Serbia, Greece, and Armenia, which would 
satisfy the ambitions of their own peoples and which at the same 
time would not outrage their neighbors. So conflicting, more- 
over, were the interests of Japan, on one hand, and of Australia 
and New Zealand, on the other, that it required much tact to 
arrive at a territorial settlement in the Pacific. Over all these 
questions the negotiations were protracted, and it was almost mi- 
raculous that a general agreement was finally reached. Only the 
weariness of the European peoples and the dictatorial attitude of 
the representatives of the five Great Powers prevented some of 
the Allied states from engaging in open war with each other, and 
even then there were hostile clashes in Central Europe between 
Poles and Czechoslovaks, between Poles and Ukrainians, between 
Rumanians and Jugoslavs, and between Jugoslavs and Italians. 

After four months of unremitting labor on the part of the 
Allied diplomatists the draft of the proposed treaty with Ger- 
many, containing about 80,000 words, was agreed to by the 
Council of Five and accepted by the Preliminary Peace Con- 
ference in plenary session assembled on May 6 ; 2 and the Pre- 

1 Against the excessive imperialism of Orlando and Sonnino, protests had been 
made in Italy, and at the close of 1918 the Socialist Leonida Bissolati and the 
Clerical Francesco Nitti had resigned their posts in the Orlando cabinet as minis- 
ters respectively of pensions and finance. As an outcome of the controversy with 
the Jugoslavs and President Wilson over Fiume, a new ministry was formed in July, 
iqiq, with Nitti as premier and Tommaso Tittoni as foreign secretary. Nitti was 
somewhat more conciliatory than his predecessor, but not even he could be deaf 
to vociferous demands of his countrymen for extensive territorial annexations. 
For the settlement subsequently proposed, in January, 1920, see below, p. 385. 

2 This plenary session on the afternoon of May 6 was secret ; and the treaty 
draft was accepted without its details being fully and generally known. The reading 



372 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

liminary Peace Conference was then transformed into the 
Definitive Peace Congress, in which Germany was to be repre- 
sented. Already, on May i, the German plenipotentiaries, 
headed by Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the foreign secretary of 
the republican government at Berlin, had been formally received 
at Versailles and had presented their credentials to the Allies. 
Now, on May 7, 1919, which by a curious coincidence was the 
fourth anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, Premier 
Clemenceau, in the presence of the plenipotentiaries of France, 
Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the United States, and the lesser 
Allied belligerents, and in their behalf, submitted the final 
peace-terms to Count Brockdcrff-Rantzau and his associates 
in the great dining hall of the Trianon Palace Hotel at Versailles. 
The terms were stringent ; they testified eloquently to Germany's 
degradation. 

Throughout the next six weeks the world's attention was 
centered upon the desperate efforts of Count Brockdorff-Rantzau 
and his fellow-delegates to induce the Council of Five to modify 
the stringent peace-terms. As oral discussion had been barred, 
the Germans continued submitting notes of protest and argu- 
ment until May 29, when they finally produced an elaborate 
set of counterproposals in a document aggregating some 60,000 
words. To this the Council of Five on June 16 made an almost 
equally extended reply, chapter for chapter ; it was in effect 
an ultimatum calling for Germany's final acceptance or refusal 
on or before Monday, June 23. It offered a number of con- 
cessions, but none of vital import. 

During the seven-day interval that followed, while the German 

Government and National Assembly were in agitated discussion 

as to whether to sign or refuse to sign, the Franco-Anglo-American 

armies of occupation, under Marshal Foch, made all necessary 

preparations, in case of refusal, to cross the Rhine in force and 

march on Berlin, and the whole world awaited the outcome calmly 

but with intense interest. Would Germany sign? German 

newspapers, German statesmen, the Scheidemann ministry, and 

President Ebert said "No." The masses of war-weary people, 

led by the Minority Socialists, said "Yes." The first result in 

Germany was a cabinet crisis : Chancellor Scheidemann resigned 

and was succeeded by Gustav Adolf Bauer, a Majority Socialist, 

with a colorless and obviously transitional ministry which was 

of a 10,000-word digest constituted the first and only knowledge of the treaty- 
vouchsafed by the Council of Five to the smaller Powers. Several Powers such as 
Portugal, France, China, and Italy, made " reservations." The complete text of 
the treaty was not printed until later. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 373 

inclined to sign. Simultaneously the bloc parties — the Ma- 
jority Socialists, the Catholic Centrists, and the Democrats, — 
fearful lest continued refusal to sign would aid the program of 
the Minority Socialists and of the Spartacan extremists, decided 
to support the new government; and on June 23, the last day 
of grace, the German National Assembly at Weimar voted to 
accept unconditionally the Allied terms. 

Dr. Hermann Mtiller, the foreign secretary in the new German 
government, and Dr. Johannes Bell, colonial secretary, were 
finally prevailed upon by Chancellor Bauer to perform the dis- 
tasteful duty of signing a most humiliating treaty of peace. 
And on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors in the stately old 
palace of Louis XIV, the Peace of Versailles was signed by the 
plenipotentiaries of Germany and by those of thirty-one l 
nations leagued against her. The scene was that in which in 
187 1 the militaristic German Empire had been born. The 
date was that on which in 19 14 the Archduke Francis Ferdinand 
of Austria-Hungary had been assassinated. The Great War thus 
formally closed on the fifth anniversary of the immediate occasion 
of its outbreak, and its close officially registered the death of the 
German Empire. 

With the signing of the treaty of Versailles, the principal 
purpose of the Peace Congress was achieved ; and President 
Wilson and many of the premiers and "experts" returned home. 
Nevertheless, Paris remained throughout 19 19 and well into 1920 
the center of most significant international negotiations. The 
Supreme Allied Council, now consisting of diplomatic agents of 
the five Great Powers, continued to hold sessions and to fashion 
peace-treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey, as 
well as to work out numerous details of the settlement as it 
affected the lesser Allied Powers and particularly as it concerned 
the new states which the Great War had brought into existence. 

The final settlements of 1919-1920 may now be rapidly 
sketched, beginning with the outstanding provisions of the treaty 
of Versailles between the Allies and Germany. This treaty, as 
ratified by the German National Assembly at Weimar on July 7, 
1919, revolutionized the international position of Germany, 
territorially, economically, and militarily. By the terms of the 
treaty, Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France, Eupen and 

1 Of the total thirty-two delegations included in the Allied Conference, the 
Chinese alone refused to sign, because of the special concessions to Japan. It should 
be remarked that General Smuts in attaching his signature on behalf of South 
Africa protested bluntly against what he conceived to be the illiberality of the 
victors to the vanquished. 



374 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 



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A NEW ERA BEGINS 



375 



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of these districts should express the desire, in a plebiscite con- 
ducted under international auspices, for incorporation within 
the Polish Republic, and in order to provide Poland with a con- 



376 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

venient access to the Baltic she consented to the establishment 
of Danzig as an internationalized free city; furthermore, she 
would acquiesce in the cession to Denmark of such districts of 
Schleswig as should vote accordingly in a similar plebiscite; 
and likewise she would submit for fifteen years to the economic 
exploitation by France, and the political control by an inter- 
national commission, of the rich Saar basin, and would under- 
take to abide by the decision reached by popular plebiscite at 
the end of fifteen years as to whether the Saar region should 
thereafter remain permanently under international government 
or revert to Germany or be ceded outright to France. 

In addition to territorial cessions in Europe, Germany sur- 
rendered all her overseas colonies and protectorates. Her lease 
of Kiao-chao and other privileges in the Chinese province of 
Shantung as well as her Pacific islands north of the equator went 
to Japan ; her portion of Samoa, to New Zealand ; her other 
Pacific possessions south of the equator, to Australia ; German 
Southwest Africa, to the British Union of South Africa ; German 
East Africa, to Great Britain ; and Kamerun and Togoland were 
partitioned between Great Britain and France. In most cases 
the Powers receiving German colonies did so not as absolute 
sovereigns but as "mandataries" of the projected League of 
Nations, to which they would be required from time to time to 
give an account of their stewardship. Besides, Germany re- 
nounced all special rights and privileges in China, Siam, Liberia, 
Morocco, and Egypt. ■• | 

Politically, Germany recognized the complete independence 
and full sovereignty of Belgium, and likewise of German Austria, 
Czechoslovakia, and Poland ; she denounced the treaties of 
Brest-Litovsk and all other agreements entered into by her with 
the Bolshevist government of Russia and gave the Allies carte 
blanche to deal as they would with Russia not only, but with 
Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria. 

Militarily, Germany promised to reduce her army to 100,000 
men, including officers ; to abolish conscription within her 
territories ; to raze all forts fifty kilometers east of the Rhine ; 
to stop all importation, exportation, and nearly all production of 
war material; to reduce her navy to six battleships, six light 
cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats, without submarines, and a 
personnel of not more than 15,000; to surrender or destroy all 
other armed vessels ; and to abandon military and naval aviation 
within three months. Moreover she agreed to demolish forti- 
fications at Heligoland, to open the Kiel Canal to all nations, to 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 377 

refrain from building forts on the Baltic, and to surrender her 
fourteen submarine cables. She specifically agreed to the trial 
of her War Lord, the ex-Kaiser, by an international high court 
for a supreme offense against international morality, 1 and of 
other Germans for violation of the laws and customs of war. 

By way of reparation and economic settlement, Germany 
accepted full responsibility for all damages caused to the allied 
and associated governments and nationals, and promised to re- 
imburse all civilian damages, beginning with an initial payment 
of five billion dollars, subsequent payments being secured by 
bonds to be issued at the discretion of an International Repara- 
tion Commission. Germany agreed to pay shipping damage 
on a ton-for-ton basis by cession of the bulk of her merchant, 
coasting, and river fleets, and by new construction ; to devote 
her economic resources to the rebuilding of the devastated 
regions ; in particular, to deliver enormous quantities of coal 
and coal-products to France, Belgium, and Italy ; to return 
works of art removed from Belgium and France ; and to deliver 
manuscripts and prints equivalent in value to those destroyed 
at Louvain. She pledged herself, moreover, to return to the 
1914 most-favored-nation tariffs, without discrimination of any 
sort ; to allow allied and associated nationals freedom of transit 
through her territories ; and to accept highly detailed provisions 
as to pre-war debts, unfair competition, internationalization of 
roads and rivers, and other economic and financial clauses. 

Until reparation should be made and the treaty fully carried 
out, Allied occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and of the 
bridgeheads at Cologne, Coblenz, and Mainz, would continue, 
although provision was made that if Germany should be duly 
fulfilling her obligations, Cologne would be evacuated at the end 
of five years, Coblenz at the end of ten years, and Mainz at the 
end of fifteen years. 

In the destruction of militaristic Germany, the peace removed 
a chief menace to the free development of democratic peoples. 
But the treaty of Versailles went further, and in two significant 
and novel respects attempted to deal with the social unrest and 
international anarchy which had hitherto prevailed throughout 

1 In accordance with this provision, Great Britain, France, and Italy, in January, 
1920, asked the Netherlands Government to surrender William II for trial on the 
charge of "moral" offenses, such as the breaking of a treaty by the invasion of 
Belgium, the authorization of ruthless submarine warfare, and the use of poisonous 
gas. Queen Wilhelmina's advisers refused to comply with the request on the 
ground that no existing international court had legal jurisdiction and that the 
Dutch people "could not betray the faith of those who have confided themselves 
to their free institutions." 



378 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the world. One section of the treaty sought to eradicate many 
of the evils inhering in the old individualistic doctrine and selfish 
practice of coequal sovereign states, by establishing a League 
of Nations. Another section recognized the relations between 
capital and labor everywhere as matters of international concern. 
These provisions were designed quite as much for the Allies them- 
selves, and even for neutral Powers, as for Germany. 

Thus, the treaty of Versailles provided for the formation of 
a permanent world-organization of labor, consisting of an annual 
International Labor Conference and an International Labor 
Office. The former was to be composed of four representatives 
of each state, two from the government and one each from the 
employers and the workingmen, and to act as a deliberative 
body, its measures taking the form of draft conventions or recom- 
mendations for legislation, which, if passed by two-thirds vote, 
must be submitted to the law-making authority in every state 
participating. Each government was left free to enact such 
recommendations into law ; approve the principle, but adapt 
them to local needs ; leave the actual legislation in case of a 
federal state to local legislatures ; or reject the recommendations 
altogether without further obligation. The International Labor 
Office was to be conducted at the seat of the League of Nations ; 
its chief functions would be the collection and distribution of 
information on labor throughout the world, the preparation of 
agenda for the Labor Conferences, and the oversight of the en- 
forcement of labor conventions between states. 

Nine principles of labor conditions were specifically recognized 
by the treaty of Versailles on the ground that "the well-being, 
physical, moral, and intellectual, of industrial wage-earners is of 
supreme international importance." With exceptions necessi- 
tated by differences of climate, habits, and economic develop- 
ment, the most significant of these principles were affirmed to 
be : (i) that labor should not be regarded merely as a commodity 
or article of commerce ; (2) right of association of employers 
and employees ; (3) a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable 
standard of life ; (^) the eight-hour day or forty-eight hour week ; 
(5) a weekly rest of at least twenty-four hours, which should 
include Sunday wherever practicable ; (6) abolition of child 
labor and assurance of the continuation of the education and 
proper physical development of children ; (7) equal pay for equal 
work as between men and women ; (8) equitable economic 
treatment of all workers, including foreigners ; and (9) a system 
of inspection in which women should take part. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 379 

In accordance with the treaty, the first meeting of the Inter- 
national Labor Conference was held at Washington, in October 
and November, 1919, and the new labor era was ushered in by- 
discussions at that time of the prevention of unemployment, the 
extension and application of the international conventions adopted 
at Berne in 1906 prohibiting night work for women and the use 
of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches, and the 
employment of women and children at night or in unhealthy 
work- 
Recognition of the international importance of labor questions 
was one of the most promising achievements of the Paris Peace 
Congress of 1919. Another, even more sensational, was the 
recognition of the evils inherent in pre-war international anarchy 
and the resulting determination on the part of President Wilson 
and his associates at Paris to institute a new world-order of 
international cooperation. The Covenant of the League of 
Nations, 1 as proposed and adopted by the Preliminary Peace 
Conference, appeared in the treaty of Versailles as Section One ; 
and with the Covenant the whole settlement of 19 19 was in- 
extricably bound up. 

As established by the Covenant, the League of Nations com- 
prised all the allied and associated powers and most neutrals, 
excluding (at the start) only Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bul- 
garia, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, and Costa Rica. In the future 
any state, dominion, or colony might be admitted to member- 
ship by two-thirds vote of the Assembly, and any state upon 
giving two years' notice might withdraw if it had fulfilled its 
international obligations. The organs of the League were to 
be: (1) a permanent Secretariat, with headquarters at Geneva 
in Switzerland ; (2) an Assembly, consisting of representatives 
of the several members of the League (each member having one 
vote and not more than three representatives), and meeting at 
stated intervals ; and (3) a Council, composed of representatives 
of the five Great Allied Powers, — the United States, Great 
Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, — together with representa- 
tives of four 'other members selected from time to time by the 
Assembly, and normally taking decisions by unanimous vote. 

The members of the League undertook "to respect and pre- 
serve as against external aggression the territorial integrity 
and existing political independence" of one another. Further- 
more, the members pledged themselves to submit matters of 
dispute to arbitration or inquiry and not to resort to war with 
1 See Appendix, below, p. 413. 



380 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

one another until three months after the award. Awards might 
take the form of judicial decisions or simply of advisory opinion ; 
normally they would be rendered by a Permanent Court of 
International Justice, for the establishment of which the Council 
should forthwith formulate plans. Members not submitting 
their case to this Court must accept the jurisdiction of the 
Council itself or of the Assembly ; in the former instance, the 
Council would make award by unanimous vote (not counting 
the parties to the dispute) ; in the latter instance, the Assembly 
would make award by unanimous vote of its members represented 
on the Council and a simple majority of the rest (not counting 
the parties to the dispute). Members agreed to carry out 
arbitral awards, and not to go to war with any party to a dis- 
pute which should comply with the award. If a member should 
fail to carry out an award, the Council would propose "the nec- 
essary measures." Members resorting to war in disregard of 
the Covenant would immediately be debarred from all inter- 
course with other members, and the Council would in such cases 
consider what military or naval action could be taken by the 
League collectively against the offending party. Similarly, 
upon any war or threat of war by any outside Power against 
any member of the League, the Council would promptly meet to 
consider what common action should be taken. 

The Covenant formally abrogated all obligations between 
members of the League inconsistent with its terms, but expressly 
affirmed "the validity of international engagements, such as 
treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe 
Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of the peace of the 
world." It especially provided, also, that all treaties or inter- 
national engagements concluded after the institution of the 
League should be registered with the Secretariat and published, 
and that the Assembly might from time to time advise members 
to reconsider treaties which had become inapplicable or involved 
danger to peace. To the Council was intrusted the important 
function of preparing plans for a general reduction of arma- 
ments ; these plans were to be revised every ten years, and, 
once adopted, no member must exceed the armaments fixed, 
without the Council's concurrence. 

Under the general supervision of the League of Nations were 
placed the International Labor Organization and its activities, 
the execution of agreements for the suppression of traffic in 
women and children and for the control of trade in arms and 
ammunition, the assurance of equitable treatment for commerce 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 381 

of all members of the League, and the international prevention 
and control of disease. International bureaus and commissions 
already established were subordinated to the League, as well as 
all those to be established in the future. 

In addition to its general duties, the League of Nations was 
intrusted by the treaty of Versailles with several specific duties 
in connection with the German settlement. Thus, the League 
might question Germany at any time for a violation of the 
neutralized zone east of the Rhine ; it would appoint three of the 
five members of the Saar Commission, oversee its regime, and 
conduct the plebiscite; it would designate the High Com- 
missioner of Danzig, guarantee the independence of the Free 
City, and arrange for treaties between Danzig and Germany 
and Poland ; it would work out the mandatary system to be 
applied to the former German colonies ; it would act as a final 
court in the plebiscites in Schleswig and on the Polish frontiers, 
and in the disputes as to the Kiel Canal ; and it would decide 
certain of the economic and financial problems arising from the 
war. 

The French Government, still fearful of a German "war of 
revenge," would have preferred to have obtained further military 
guarantees from Germany and to have strengthened the Covenant 
by providing for a permanent international General Staff which 
should direct the military action of the League of Nations in 
resisting any attempted German aggression in the future. To 
mollify the French and meet their criticisms, President Wilson 
and Premier Lloyd George concluded on June 28 special treaties 
respectively between the United States and France and between 
France and Great Britain, by the terms of which the United 
States and Great Britain would be bound to come immediately 
to the aid of France if any unprovoked act of aggression should 
be made against her by Germany. It was specifically provided 
that these treaties should be submitted to the Council of the 
League of Nations, which would decide whether to recognize 
them as engagements in conformity with the League Covenant ; 
in the meantime, the Franco-American treaty should be sub- 
mitted for approval to the United States Senate and the French 
Parliament. 

The treaty of Versailles, including the Labor Convention and 
the Covenant of the League of Nations, was ratified by Ger- 
many on July 7, by France on October 13, by Great Britain 
and Italy on October 15, and by Japan on October 30. China 
accepted it, with reservations concerning the cession of Shantung 



382 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

to Japan, on September 24; and most of the other signatories 
ratified it promptly. In the case of the United States, President 
Wilson encountered extraordinary opposition from the Repub- 
lican majority in the Senate and even from certain members of 
his own political party. Among his opponents were those who 
specially objected to the Covenant of the League of Nations as 
tending to impair American sovereignty and vitiate certain 
constitutional powers of the American Congress, or as tending 
further to entangle the United States in the meshes of Old- 
World diplomacy; there were those likewise who were bitterly 
disappointed with the terms of peace with Germany, particu- 
larly the concessions to Japan and to Great Britain, and who 
were unwilling that the United States should underwrite a 
''vicious" and "unjust" peace; and there were doubtless those 
who felt that President Wilson had treated the Senate altogether 
too cavalierly, as well as those who were fearful lest a Demo- 
cratic President should derive political capital from a radical 
change in American foreign policy. For months a deadlock 
ensued between the President and the Senate Majority, the 
latter insisting upon "reservations" which the former would not 
accept. The Senate in November, 1919, adopted, by majority 
vote, some fifteen drastic reservations to the treaty of Versailles, 
but failed to secure the necessary two-thirds vote for the ratifi- 
cation of the treaty with these reservations. Thenceforth 
various efforts were made to reach a compromise ; and in Feb- 
ruary, 1920, it looked as though the United States would shortly 
ratify the treaty with somewhat milder reservations than those 
originally adopted by the Senate in November. 1 As yet it was 
extremely doubtful whether the United States Senate would 
ratify the Franco-American Alliance Treaty, although its com- 
plement had already been ratified by Great Britain. 2 

The Allies delayed for some time to put the treaty of Ver- 
sailles into effect, hoping that the United States would join 
them in ratifying the document. At length, however, on Jan- 
uary 10, 1920, representatives of all the Powers which to date 
had approved the Versailles Treaty deposited their certificates 
of ratification at Paris and signed the proces-verbal which put 
the treaty into effect. This ceremony, which formally ended 
the Great War, was discharged in the Clock Hall of the French 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fourteen allied and associated 

1 For these Senate Reservations of November, iqiq, see Appendix II. 

2 For the proposed treaty of Triple Alliance between France and Great Britain, 
and France and the United States, see Appendix III. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 383 

Powers on the one hand, — France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, 
Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Poland, 
Siam, Czechoslovakia, and Uruguay, — and Germany on the 
other, made peace and again became "friendly nations." The 
United States did not participate, nor did China, Greece, or 
Rumania. 

On January 16, 1920, pursuant to the call of President Wilson, 
the first meeting of the Council of the League of Nations was 
held in Paris. It comprised representatives of Great Britain, 
France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Belgium, and Brazil. Leon Bour- 
geois, the French representative, was elected chairman, and 
Sir Eric Drummond was installed as permanent secretary ; and 
the Council prepared to arrange for the convocation of the 
League Assembly, and to take up and continue the manifold 
labors of the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference, which 
formally disbanded on January 20. 

The settlement of 1919-1920 was effected not only by the 
Covenant of the League of Nations, by the proposed new Triple 
Alliance of France, Great Britain, and the United States, by the 
novel Labor Convention, and by the drastic terms of the treaty 
of Versailles with Germany, but also by the series of peace 
treaties concluded by the Allies in turn with Austria, with Bul- 
garia, with Hungary, and with Turkey, and likewise by a vast 
number of special engagements entered into among the allied 
and associated Powers themselves. 

Austria, by the treaty signed at St. Germain on September 10, 
1919, and ratified by the Austrian National Assembly on October 
17, was required to recognize the complete independence of 
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Serbo-Croat-Slovene 
State (Serbia), and to cede various territories which previously, 
in union with her, composed the Dual Monarchy of Austria- 
Hungary. Austria was left thereby a small independent German 
republic, with an area of five thousand to six thousand square 
miles and a population of between six and seven millions. She 
was deprived of seaports and her army was restricted to 30,000 
men. 

From Bulgaria were taken, by the treaty signed at Neuilly, 
near Paris, on November 27, 1918, most of the territories which 
she had appropriated in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and 
all her conquests in the Great War; the Dobrudja went to 
Rumania ; the greater part of Macedonia, to Serbia ; and the 
Thracian coast, to the Allies, who seemed disposed to award it 
eventually to Greece with an understanding that Bulgarian 



3&J. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

goods might be transported across it duty-free. Bulgaria was 
obliged to pay an indemnity of approximately $445,000,000, and 
to reduce her army to 20,000 men, with a police-force not exceed- 
ing 10,000. 

With Hungary, the Allies encountered exceptional difficulties 
in making peace, for a radical Socialist revolution at Budapest 
on March 21 overthrew the government of Count Karolyi and 
set up a Soviet government under Bela Kun, a former associate 
of Lenin and Trotsky, the Russian Bolshevist leaders ; and Bela 
Kun pursued most dilatory and annoying tactics in dealing with 
the Allies. It was not until Rumanian troops invaded the 
country and approached the capital, in August, that Bela Kun 
was driven from power and replaced by a Provisional Govern- 
ment under Archduke Joseph, which resumed negotiations for 
peace. As ultimately arranged, Hungary was stripped of non- 
Magyar peoples as completely as Austria had been shorn of 
non- German peoples : Slovakia went to Czechoslovakia ; Tran- 
sylvania was ceded to Rumania ; Croatia was incorporated into 
the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes ; and the Banat 
was divided between Rumania and Serbia. Hungary itself 
shrank from a maritime, imperialistic country of 125,000 square 
miles and twenty-two million inhabitants into a landlocked 
national Magyar state of nine millions with a trivial army of 
30,000 men. 

The conclusion of peace with the Ottoman Empire was an 
even slower process. Allied diplomatists obviously did not 
know what to do with Constantinople, now that Russia had 
collapsed, and they were embarrassed by protracted disputes 
between France and Great Britain over Syria, and between Italy 
and Greece over Asia Minor. By February, 1920, however, the 
general outlines of the probable settlement in the Near East 
were becoming clear : the Arab state of Hedjaz, embracing the 
territory east of the Red Sea and the River Jordan and the 
towns of Damascus and Aleppo, would become autonomous, 
under a British mandate; Armenia would become a free Chris- 
tian republic, under international auspices; and, probably as 
mandataries of the League of Nations, Great Britain would take 
Palestine and Mesopotamia, France would secure Syria and 
Cilicia, Italy would appropriate Adalia, and Greece would ob- 
tain Smyrna and adjacent territory on the coast of Asia Minor. 
It appeared certain that the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus 
would be internationalized and that Turkey's future would be 
that of a small national state confined mainly to Asia Minor. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 385 

Among the Allied and Associated Governments various other 
territorial and commercial matters were the subject of nego- 
tiation in 1919-1920. Thus, in November, 1919, Poland was 
given a twenty-five year mandate to Eastern Galicia, with its 
sixteen million inhabitants, a majority of whom are Ruthenians 
(Ukrainians) ; and arrangements were made for a plebiscite in 
Teschen, to determine whether that district should go to Poland 
or to Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, Greece and Italy agreed 
to settle their outstanding differences : Italy would yield to 
Greece southern Albania and the twelve islands in the ^Egean 
which had been under Italian rule since the Tripolitan War of 
1911-1912; in return, Greece would lease to Italy the site of a 
coaling station in the ^Egean islands and would recognize an 
Italian protectorate over the greater part of Albania. Then, 
too, in November, 1919, the Arctic archipelago of Spitzbergen, 
hitherto a "no man's land," was ceded to Norway. And a 
special convention between Belgium and the Netherlands, con- 
cluded in 1920, freed navigation on the Scheldt from onerous 
Dutch restrictions and otherwise relieved Belgium of burden- 
some disabilities imposed upon her by the treaty of 1839, which 
had recognized her independence. 

To draw a boundary-line along the eastern coast of the Adri- 
atic between Italy and Jugoslavia (Serbia) proved peculiarly 
troublesome. So long as the Orlando cabinet was in power at 
Rome, Italy vehemently demanded the cession to her, not only 
of the Adriatic islands and that part of Dalmatia pledged her by 
the secret treaties of 191 5 and 191 7, but the important port of 
Fiume also, — a demand stubbornly rejected both by the Jugo- 
slavs and by the American President. With the advent to 
power of the more conciliatory Italian cabinet of Francesco 
Nitti in July, 19 19, the outlook for a mutually acceptable com- 
promise grew brighter, only to be overcast, however, in Septem- 
ber, by the forcible seizure of Fiume by a free-lance Italian expe- 
dition under Gabriele d'Annunzio, the ultra-patriotic poet- 
soldier-adventurer. D'Annunzio posed as a twentieth-century 
Garibaldi, and even surpassed his illustrious prototype in rhe- 
torical exuberance and likewise in creating embarrassment for 
the Italian Government. D'Annunzio won a plebiscite in 
Fiume and raided the town of Zara in Dalmatia ; but the gen- 
eral Italian election, in November, 1919, registered an over- 
whelming majority of the Italian people as disposed to support 
Nitti rather than D'Annunzio, and late in January, 1920, the 
Italian Government agreed to a compromise proposed by the 



386 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Allied Supreme Council, by which both Fiume and Zara would 
be internationalized under the auspices of the League of Nations ; 
Italy would secure the eastern Adriatic coast as far south as 
Fiume, the greater part of Albania, and the Adriatic islands of 
Lissa and Lesina; and Serbia would obtain the other Adriatic 
islands, Dalmatia, and a northern strip of Albania. Against 
this compromise, however, the Jugoslavs protested, and in Feb- 
ruary the deadlock still persisted. 

A whole series of treaties was concluded by the Great Powers 
with the several states which had recently come into existence — 
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, etc., — and likewise with those 
lesser Powers whose national unifications had been achieved in 
the course of the Great War — Rumania, Serbia, and Greece. 
These treaties contained provisions relating to boundaries, to the 
assumption of debts of annexed regions, and to commercial 
affairs. In most instances, moreover, they contained provisions 
guaranteeing certain rights and privileges to racial or religious 
minorities within these states. In the case of Poland, and in that 
of Rumania, special protection was deemed necessary for the 
Jews ; in the case of Serbia, it was the Catholics ; in the case of 
Czechoslovakia, it was the German minority in Bohemia. 

In all these cases much the same phraseology was utilized as 
in the treaty concluded by the Allies with German Austria : 
"Austria undertakes to bring her institutions into conformity 
with the principles of liberty and justice and acknowledges that 
the obligations for the protection of minorities are matters of 
international concern over which the League of Nations has 
jurisdiction. She assures complete protection of life and liberty 
to all inhabitants of Austria, without distinction of birth, lan- 
guage, race, or religion, together with the right to the free exercise 
of any creed. All Austrian nationals without distinction of 
race, language, or religion are to be equal before the law. No 
restrictions are to be imposed on the free use of any language 
in private or public, and reasonable facilities are to be given to 
Austrian nationals of non-German speech for the use of their 
language before the courts. Austrian nationals belonging to 
racial, religious, or linguistic minorities are to enjoy the same 
protection as other Austrian nationals, in particular in regard 
to schools and other educational establishments and in districts 
where a considerable portion of Austrian nationals of other than 
German speech are resident ; facilities are to be given in schools 
for the instruction of children in their own language and an 
equable share of public funds is to be provided for the purpose. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 387 

These provisions do not preclude the Austrian Government from 
making the teaching of German obligatory. They are to be 
embodied by Austria in her fundamental law as a bill of rights, 
and provisions regarding them are to be under the protection 
of the League of Nations." 

Such were the salient points in the settlement effected in 
1919-1920 by the host of statesmen, diplomatists, and "experts." 
There were still a vast number of intricate and perplexing prob- 
lems to be faced and solved by the Great Powers before the world 
could properly be pronounced "normal" and "settled." There 
were treaties to be ratified and put in force. There was the 
League of Nations to be provided with machinery and precedents. 
There was the dilatory and doubtful action of the United States. 
There was the uncertain status of Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 
and Ukrainia. There were no defined eastern boundaries of 
Poland. There were outstanding imperialistic difficulties in 
Asia, in Africa, and in America. There were the grievances of 
China against Japan, and of Ireland against Great Britain. 1 
Above all, there was Bolshevism in Russia, chaos in one of the 
largest countries on the surface of the globe. 2 

1 As a result of the unwillingness or inability of the British Government to carry 
into effect the Home Rule Act of 1914, Ireland had grown steadily more restive, 
until the general election of December, 1918, returned from the unhappy island 
26 Ulster Unionists, 6 Nationalists, and 73 Sinn Feiners. Sinn Fein thus secured 
an overwhelming majority of Irish votes, and, by a sort of referendum, Ireland 
declared in no uncertain terms for the right of independent, national self-determi- 
nation. The Sinn Feiners who were elected to Parliament, refusing to take part in 
the proceedings of the British House of Commons at Westminster, assembled in 
Dublin, proclaimed the independence of their country, drafted a democratic con- 
stitution, elected Eamonn de Valera president and appointed plenipotentiaries to 
the Peace Congress. The British Government would not treat with the "pro- 
visional government" at Dublin or allow the Irish Question to be discussed at 
Paris. President Wilson, it is true, received a committee representing Irish- 
Americans and listened to their pleas in behalf of Ireland, but Premier Lloyd George 
declined even to receive them. Subsequently, in September, 19 19, the "Irish 
Parliament" was suppressed by the British Government; and throughout 1919 
Ireland was ruled with a rod of iron. At the end of the year a new project for 
Irish Home Rule was put forward by the British Government, involving the crea- 
tion of separate parliaments for Ulster and for the rest of Ireland and of a joint 
"Council of Ireland," but it was opposed both by the Ulster Unionists and by the 
Sinn Feiners. 

2 The Allies failed signally in 1919 to solve the "Russian Question." In Jan- 
uary they proposed a conference of all Russian factions and "governments" on 
Prinkipo Island, in the Sea of Marmora, under their auspices; the Bolsheviki 
accepted, and likewise the Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, but 
the opposition of anti-Bolshevist Russians was so acute and the Allies themselves 
were so irresolute that the project was soon dropped. The Allies could not bring 
themselves to recognize the Bolshevist regime at Moscow, although Lenin assured 
them that the Soviet Government would agree to assume the foreign indebtedness 
of previous Russian governments. On the other hand, they did not give sufficient 
aid to Admiral Kolchak or other anti-Bolshevist Russian leaders to bring about the 



388 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Yet at the beginning of 1920 enough of a settlement had already- 
been reached, and the settlement was sufficiently revolutionary, 
to justify us in hailing it as the beginning of a new era. In the 
following section we shall undertake roughly to estimate what 
the settlement had cost Europe and the world in the five years of 
warfare from the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdi- 
nand, on June 28, 1914, to the signing of the treaty of Versailles, 
on June 28, 1919. Then, in the concluding section, we shall 
make bold to state wherein, as we think, lies the significance of 
the new era, the real meaning of the Great War. 

THE LOSSES 

The Great War was indeed a cataclysm ; and commensurate 
with the revolutionary peace settlement which followed it were 
the gigantic losses in life and property which attended it. Six- 
teen established states — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, 
France, the British Empire, Italy, the United States, Japan, 
Belgium, Turkey, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Rumania, 
Greece, and Portugal, — and three new ones which the war 
brought forth — Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hedjaz, — as- 
sembled their human powers for the conflict — fifteen on one 
side and four on the other. Against one or more of the four, 
eleven other nations also declared war, but engaged in it less 
actively, — Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, 
Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, and Siam. Of the re- 
maining twenty independent nations of the world, five — Bolivia, 
Ecuador, Peru, Santo Domingo, and Uruguay — severed diplo- 
matic relations with one or more of the four original aggressors, 
and one — Persia — became a battle-ground of contending forces. 
Only fourteen independent states on the earth's surface pre- 
served neutrality — Abyssinia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, 
Denmark, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Salvador, 
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Venezuela. All states, neu- 
tral as well as belligerent, were seriously affected by the Great 
War. 

The toll of human life taken by the Great War was simply 
astounding. The table printed below gives the most reliable 
estimates regarding the man-power employed and the casualties 

downfall of Lenin by force of arms. While declaring that their intervention in 
Russia was aimed at relieving the distress and suffering of the Russian people, they 
enforced with great rigor an economic blockade against the Bolsheviki, thereby 
inflicting no slight hardship upon the most populous regions of Russia. It was not 
until January 16, 1920, that the Allied Supreme Council raised the blockade. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 



389 



suffered by the sixteen nations which were officially mobilized 
for the war and took an active part in it. 

Mobilized Strength and Casualty Losses of the Belligerents x 
Central Powers 



Nation 


Mobilized 


Dead 


Wounded 


Prisoners 

or 
Missing 


Total 
Casualties 


Germany 

Austria-Hungary . . 

Turkey 

Bulgaria 


11,000,000 

6,500,000 

1,600,000 

400,000 


1,611,104 
800,000 
300,000 
101,224 


3,683,143 

3,200,000 

570,000 

152,399 


772,522 

1,211 ,000 

130,000 

10,825 


6,066,769 

5,211,000 

1,000,000 

264,448 


Total 


19,500,000 


2,812,328 


7,605,542 


2,124,347 


12,542,217 



Allied and Associated Powers 



Nation 



Mobilized 



Dead 



Wounded 



Prisoners 

or 

Missing 



Total 

Casualties 



Russia . . . 

France . . . 
British Empire 

Italy . . . 
United States 

Japan . . . 

Belgium . . 

Serbia . . . 

Montenegro . 

Rumania . . 

Greece . . . 

Portugal . . 

Total . . 



12,000,000 
7,500,000 
7,500,000 
5,500,000 
4,272,521 
800,000 
267,000 

707,343 
50,000 
750,000 
230,000 
100,000 



1 , 700,000 

1,385,300 

692,065 

460,000 

67,813 

300 

20,000 

322,000 

3,000 

200,000 

15,000 

4,000 



4,950,000 
2,675,000 

2,037,325 

947,000 

192,483 

907 

60,000 

28,000 

10,000 

120,000 

40,000 

15,000 



2,500,000 

446,300 

360,367 

1,393,000 

14,363 

3 

10,000 

100,000 

7,000 

80,000 

45,000 

200 



9,150,000 
4,506,600 
3,089,757 
2,800,000 

274,659 
1,210 

90,000 
450,000 

20,000 
400,000 
100,000 

10,000 



39,676,864 



4,869,478 



n,o75,7i5 



4,956,233 



20,892,226 



It has been estimated that the Polish combatants with the 
Allies numbered 150,000; that the Czechoslovak armies in 
Siberia, France, and Italy included 180,000 nationals; that the 
sultan of Hedjaz fought the Turk with 250,000 Arabs. These 
three new nations, therefore, employed a combatant force of 
580,000 men, which was joined to the Allies' 39,676,864 against 
the Central Powers' 19,500,000. 

Nearly sixty million men at war! Of this huge number 
nearly eight millions died and approximately six millions (or 
thirty per cent, of the wounded) became human wrecks. But 

1 Much of this statistical information is taken from an interesting article by 
Walter Littlefield in The New York Times Current History for February, 1919, 
pp. 239 et sqq. 



390 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

this only refers to the soldiers and sailors who died or were 
irreparably maimed. Civilians suffered even more grievously, 
not only by engines of war, but by famine, disease, and massacre. 
There were those who were killed by direct military causes ; 
those who died from indirect causes. 

In the first category we have : 692 Americans slain on the high 
seas; 20,620 British subjects slain on the high seas; 1270 
English men, women, and children, the victims of air raids and 
bombardment ; 30,000 Belgians butchered or deprived of life 
in various ways; 40,000 French similarly destroyed; and 7500 
neutrals slain by submarines and mines ; a total of over 100,000. 
In the second category we have : four million Armenians, Syrians, 
Jews, and Greeks, massacred or starved by the Turks ; four 
million deaths beyond the normal mortality as the result of the 
influenza and pneumonia induced by the war; one million 
Serbian dead through disease or massacre. All this gives a 
military and civilian mortality, directly or indirectly the product 
of the Great War, of about seventeen millions. 

And this is not all. Who can even estimate the millions of 
human beings whose bones whitened the roads of Poland, 
Ukrainia, and Lithuania, and the other millions who were starved 
throughout the length and breadth of Europe by blockades, 
malnutrition, and revolutionary disorders ? 

It should be remembered, moreover, that the gigantic human 
losses were bound to be an even greater debit to the following 
generation than to the present, for the soldiers killed were mostly 
youthful, the ablest, strongest, most spirited, and most promising 
members of the race, and among civilians the mortality was 
highest of children and of child-bearing women. Furthermore, 
while Europe was most grievously affected in this respect, many 
regions in other continents received serious set-backs. For 
example, in the total armed strength and casualties of the 
British Empire were included millions of stalwart young men from 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India ; 
in the case of Canada, out of an aggregate population of seven 
and a half million, nearly one million went to war, and of this 
number over one hundred thousand never returned ; even India 
supplied almost a million native troops who suffered enormous 
losses in Mesopotamia, in Arabia, and in East Africa. In the 
French totals likewise were embraced at least 900,000 colonials, 
chiefly black, who did their full share of fighting and suffered 
proportionately. 
. Throughout the world there was a noticeable decline in the 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 



39 1 



birth-rate. In France, for illustration, official statistics showed 
that civilian population in the four years of the war decreased 
by considerably over three-quarters of a million, without in- 
cluding the deaths in occupied Northern France or the losses 
due directly to the war. In 1913 the births in France outnum- 
bered the deaths by 17,000, but in the following year this excess 
disappeared and thereafter the deaths considerably outnumbered 
the births — in 1914 by more than 50,000, and in 1915, 1916, 
191 7, and 1918 by nearly 300,000 in each year. Births, which 
numbered approximately 600,000 in 1913, dropped to 315,000 
in 1 91 6, while the deaths increased, but not in comparable pro- 
portions, so that the total decrease in population was due less 
to any great increase in deaths than to a great diminution in 
births. It seemed as though mothers despaired of bringing 
children into a world the prey to the horrors and terror of war. 
And what was true of France was true, only in lesser degree, of 
other belligerents. 

If during the four years of the Great War blood flowed like 
water, money was poured out similarly. From August, 1914, to 
August, 1 9 18, — thereby excluding the final stage of the war 
and the whole period of settlement and readjustment, — the 
principal belligerent nations increased their public debts as 
follows *. 

Public Indebtedness 1 

Central Powers 



Nation 


August, 1914 


August, 1918 


Increase 


Germany 

Austria 

Hungary 


$ 1,165,000,000 
2,640,000,000 
1,345,000,000 


$ 30,000,000,000 

13,314,000,000 

5,704,000,000 


$28,835,000,000 

10,674,000,000 

4,359,000,000 


Total 


$ 5,150,000,000 


$ 49,018,000,000 


$43,868,000,000 





Allied and Associated Powers 




Great Britain .... 


$ 3,458,000,000 


$ 30,000,000,000 


$26,542,000,000 


Rest of British Empire . 


1,454,000,000 


3,000,000,000 


1,546,000,000 


Russia 


5,092,000,000 


25,383,000,000 


20,291,000,000 




6,598,000,000 


25,227,000,000 


18,629,000,000 


United States .... 


1,208,000,000 


15,008,000,000 


13,800,000,000 


Italy 


2,792,000,000 


7,676,000,000 


4,884,000,000 




$20,602,000,000 


$106,294,000,000 


$85,692,000,000 



1 These statistics are taken from an article by D. G. Rogers in The New York 
Times Current History for August, 1918, pp. 227 et sqq. 



392 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

Among the Allies, Great Britain showed the largest increase 
of indebtedness : her total of twenty-six and a half billions in- 
cluded some eight billions advanced by her to the Entente and 
to the British Dominions and likewise some four billions loaned 
her by the United States. In the same category with the eight 
billions advanced by Great Britain, chiefly to Russia and Italy, 
should be put American loans totaling eight and a half billions, 
of which four billions went to Great Britain, two and a half to 
France, one and a quarter to Italy, and the rest was distributed 
in smaller amounts among Russia, Belgium, Greece, Cuba, 
Serbia, Rumania, Liberia, and Czechoslovakia. In the case 
of the Central Empires, their increased indebtedness included 
large financial advances to Bulgaria and Turkey. 

Increase of public indebtedness, staggering though it appeared, 
was only part of the cost of the Great War to the belligerent 
states. Vast sums of money were taken in direct and indirect 
taxes, — heavy income taxes, taxes on war profits, taxes on 
luxuries, etc., etc. No human being escaped the necessity of 
contributing something to the military decision. In France, for 
example, the civilian population paid in taxes in 1918 thirty- 
eight dollars per capita. Hand in hand with this universally 
burdensome taxation and with the floating of gigantic loans 
went naturally enormous issues of paper-money and a dangerous 
inflation of currency. Thus, while the amounts of gold and silver 
in the banks of the warring countries of Europe changed but little 
in the aggregate from August, 1914^0 November, 19 18, the ratio 
of these amounts to their liabilities decreased from 54.3 to 9.4. 
The result was a stupendous increase in the cost of living through- 
out the world. 

Then, too, the Great War served to diminish the production 
of food-staples and thereby to bring Europe to the verge of 
starvation. Mr. Herbert Hoover, who as Director General of 
the International Relief Organization made a tour through the 
Continent shortly after the signing of the armistice, cabled in 
January, 1919, to the United States a brief statement of conditions 
as he had found them : 

"Finland — The food is practically exhausted in the cities. 
While many of the peasants have some bread, other sections are 
mixing large amounts of straw. They are exhausted of fats, meats, 
and sugar, and need help to prevent renewed rise of Bolshevism. 

"Baltic States — The food may last one or two months on a 
much reduced scale. They sent a deputation to our Ministry at 
Stockholm imploring food. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 393 

"Serbia — The town bread ration is down to three ounces 
daily in the north not accessible from Salonica. In the south, 
where accessible, the British are furnishing food to the civil 
population. We are trying to get food in from the Adriatic. 

"Jugoslavia — The bread ration in many towns is three or four 
ounces. All classes are short of fats, milk, and meats. 

"Vienna — Except for supplies furnished by the Italians and 
Swiss, their present bread ration of six ounces per diem would 
disappear. There is much illness from the shortage of fats, 
the ration being one-and-one-half ounces per week. There is 
no coffee, sugar, or eggs, and practically no meat. 

"Tyrol — The people are being fed by Swiss charity. 

"Poland — The peasants probably have enough to get through. 
The mortality in cities, particularly among children, is appalling 
for lack of fats, milk, meat, and bread. The situation in bread 
will be worse in two months. 

"Rumania — The bread supply for the entire people is esti- 
mated to last another thirty days. They are short of fats and 
milk. The last harvest was sixty per cent a failure. 

"Bulgaria — The harvest was also a failure here. There are 
supplies available for probably two or three months. 

"Armenia — is already starving. 

" Czechoslovakia — There is large suffering on account of lack 
of fats and milk. They have bread for two or three months 
and sugar for six months." 

The havoc wrought by the Great War can never be fully 
estimated. For France, one of the grievous sufferers, a few 
statistics are available, 1 and from these perhaps we may form a 
faint notion of the cost of the war. French agriculture was hard 
hit : the soil of the entire country, having been tilled for four 
years mainly by women, elderly men, and young boys, was greatly 
impoverished ; the number of cattle, which in England decreased 
by four per cent., decreased in France by eighteen per cent. ; the 
production of milk decreased by sixty- three per cent. ; the number 
of sheep diminished by thirty-eight per cent., and of swine, by 
forty per cent. In the invaded region alone the damage caused 
directly by the Germans to the soil, to live-stock, to crops, tools, 
etc., was estimated conservatively at two billion dollars. 

Furthermore, the part of France occupied by the Germans 
produced before the war four-fifths of the coal and iron supplies 
of the whole country and included three-fourths of the nation's 

1 In a report prepared in December, 1918, by Mr. George B. Ford, head of the 
Research Department of the American Red Cross in France. 



394 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

spinning and weaving industries. During the four years of 
their occupation the Germans willfully and methodically de- 
stroyed all that was in their power to destroy. In the cotton 
industry, the French lost more than two and a quarter million 
spindles and twenty thousand looms. Iron works, machine 
works also, were looted, the useful equipment — engines, rolling 
mills, machine tools, even structural steel — having been taken 
away and utilized again in the iron works in Germany. Mines 
were flooded, the surface plants dynamited, the workmen's 
dwellings destroyed. It was estimated that altogether four bil- 
lion dollars' worth of machinery would be needed to replace that 
destroyed or carried away. 

Another two billion dollars would be required to replace the 
250,000 destroyed buildings in France and to repair the 500,000 
damaged buildings. Yet another two billions would have to 
be spent in repairing and replacing the used or destroyed public 
works in northern France : the Northern Railway alone had 
lost 1 73 1 bridges and 338 stations. According to figures sub- 
mitted by the Budget Committee to the Chamber of Deputies 
in December, 1918, the total damage in the north of France, 
including public works, buildings, furniture, industry, agri- 
culture, and forestry, was estimated at sixty-four billion francs, 
or close to thirteen billion dollars. 

Little Belgium had suffered at least two billion dollars' worth 
of outright destruction, and in addition there were two billions in 
thefts and taxes imposed by Germany. Of this amount, one 
and one-half billions represented the loss of machinery, tools, 
and stock. And if to the special losses of France and Belgium 
were added those of Poland, Russia, Rumania, Serbia, and 
Italy, a financial amount could be computed that would surpass 
human powers of comprehension. No financial amount could 
compensate the world for the destruction of such monuments as 
the cathedral of Rheims or the library of Louvain. 

Finally, in sketching the cost of the Great War, we must not 
lose sight of the enormous destruction of the world's shipping. 
The total losses of the world's merchant tonnage from the be- 
ginning of the war to the end of October, 1918, through belligerent 
action and marine risk, was 15,053,786 gross tons, of which 
9,031,828 were British. In December, 1918, Sir Eric Geddes, 
First Lord of the British Admiralty, stated that 5622 British 
merchant ships had been sunk during the war, of which 2475 had 
been sunk with their crews still on board and 3147 had been sunk 
and their crews set adrift. Fishing vessels to the number of 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 395 

670 had been destroyed, and more than 15,000 men in the British 
merchant marine had lost their lives through enemy action. 
Emergency building had contributed much to the replacement 
of lost tonnage, but it had been accomplished at heavy expense. 
The United States bore its share of the losses. According to 
official figures published by the Bureau of Navigation, a total 
of 145 American merchant vessels, of 354,449 gross tons, with 
775 lives, was lost through enemy acts from the beginning of the 
war to the cessation of hostilities on November n. Nineteen 
of the 145 vessels and sixty-seven of the 775 lives were lost through 
German torpedoes, mines, and gunfire prior to the entrance of 
the United States into the Great War. 

LANDMARKS OF THE NEW ERA 

The Great War could not do otherwise than close one era in 
human history and inaugurate another. Its expenditure of 
man-power and of natural resources was too prodigious to allow 
the world to be the same in 1920 as it had been in 1914. To be 
sure, much remained unchanged, for the human animal is too 
instinctively conservative, too naturally a victim of habit, to 
permit even a cataclysm like the Great War to wrench him quite 
loose from the institutions and customs of the past. Besides, 
many of the changes which attracted most attention during the 
five years' conflict were destined possibly to be only temporary, 
and others would seem perhaps to future generations humorously 
insignificant. 

Yet after making full allowance for the numerous and im- 
portant respects in which the world was not changed by the 
Great War, or was altered only temporarily, sufficiently striking 
novelties had already appeared in society and in government in 
1920, as a direct or indirect outcome of the struggle, to justify 
us in describing them briefly as landmarks of a new era. In 
these landmarks is found the significance of the Great War. 

What was accomplished by five years' unprecedented out- 
pouring of blood and treasure? The most obvious achievement, 
certainly the most universally impressive to contemporaries, 
was the staggering defeat of Germany and her associates. Ger- 
many, a militaristic Power par excellence, after frightening Europe 
for two generations by swashbuckling words and rattlings of 
heavy armor, had finally essayed by dint of methods most truly 
anarchic and by aid of confederates most terribly unscrupulous 
to impose her will and her Kultur upon the world; she had 



396 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

ultimately taken the sword and sought to substitute for the 
system of free sovereign states and for the Balance of Power a 
world-order established and maintained on the basis of a Pax 
Romana Germanica. She had failed. The slogan of her Bern- 
hardi — Weltmacht oder Niedergang — had been answered with 
Niedergang. Her dream of a Teutonized Mittel-Enropa was 
dispelled. Turkey and Austria-Hungary were disrupted ; Bul- 
garia and Germany herself were overwhelmed and crushed. The 
Great War, in this respect, confirmed an historical lesson of 
modern times, that no one state could or would be suffered to 
revive a Roman Empire ; and William II of Germany proved 
to be but a shadow following the fated footsteps of Emperor 
Charles V, of Philip II of Spain, of Louis XIV of France, and of 
Napoleon Bonaparte. And with the downfall of the German 
Empire in the twentieth century, the free nations of the world 
breathed more easily. 

Other achievements, incidental to this major one, deserve 
more extended consideration, for they, in the main, are positive 
and constructive, while the defeat of Germany in itself was 
merely destructive and negative. If we contrast the world in 
1919 with the world in 1914, we discover the following facts and 
tendencies, significant outgrowths of the Great War and prophetic 
landmarks of a new era : 

I. Nationalism. The Great War marked the all but universal 
triumph of the principle of nationalism, the doctrine that people 
who speak the same language and have the same historic tra- 
ditions shall live together under a common polity of their own 
making. This principle, this doctrine, made rapid headway 
during the five years' strife ; the Germans utilized it against 
Russia, and the Allies invoked it against the Central Empires. 
Generally the prophets and seers of the new era, unlike those of 
the eighteenth century, did not decry nationalism in behalf 
of an Utopian "cosmopolitanism"; they extolled nationalism 
alike as desirable in itself and as a starting-point on the 
promised road to "internationalism." Nor did the peace- 
makers of 1919-1920 repeat the mistake of their predecessors 
at Vienna a century earlier and ignore the unmistakable pop- 
ular longings for national self-determination ; on the other hand, 
they consecrated nationalism and wrote it into the public law 
of Europe. 

Four great non-nationalistic states were dismembered — 
Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and Germany, — and one 
small state — Montenegro — disappeared. From the ruins 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 



397 



emerged nine newly independent national states — Poland, 
Czechoslovakia, Hedjaz, Armenia, Finland, Ukrainia, Lithuania, 
Latvia, and Esthonia, — while, through annexations and con- 
solidations, the national unification was virtually completed of 
Italy, of Jugoslavia (Serbia), of Rumania, and of Greece; and 
the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France and of the Danish- 
speaking portion of Schleswig to Denmark redressed long- 
standing national grievances. Germany, deprived of Danes, 
French, and Poles, became for the first time in history genuinely 
a national state. Similarly, Russia became a homogeneous state 
of Great Russians ; Hungary, a national state of Magyars ; the 
Ottoman Empire, a small national state of Mohammedan Turks ; 
and Austria, a minor but homogeneous Teuton colony on the 
Danube. Had German Austria been permitted to unite formally 
with Germany, all central Europe, except Switzerland, would 
have been completely reorganized on a national basis. 

In recognizing the new nationalistic order of things, the 
diplomatists had the farsightedness to try to correct its intolerant 
tendencies by eliciting pledges from the new national states to 
preserve and respect religious, cultural, and economic rights 
of dissentient nationalities within their territories. In this war 
the Jews especially were, in Central Europe, placed more or less 
under international protection. What with the encouragement 
of Zionism in Palestine and with the international guarantee 
of their status in Europe, the Jews were signal gainers by the 
Great W r ar. 

In certain quarters of the world, particularly in Allied terri- 
tories, national self-determination was temporarily checked or 
suppressed. Such was the situation in Ireland, where, though 
conditions were not essentially different from those in Czecho- 
slovakia, the British Government thwarted the undoubted desire 
of the majority of the people to found a national republic and 
successfully combated their every effort to obtain a hearing at 
the Peace Congress. In Egypt, too, the British suppressed a 
national insurrection by force of arms in the spring of 1919. 
And in Albania the Italians set to work deliberately to stifle the 
spirit of independent nationalism. Yet in all these regions 
nationalistic agitation went forward ; it troubled to an unusual 
degree the British in India and in Persia, the Japanese in Korea, 
and to some extent the Americans in the Philippines. 

II. Change in Relative Importance of States. As an outcome 
of the Great War there was, on the one hand, a considerable in- 
crease in the number of small independent states in the world. 



398 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and, on the other, a reduction in the number of Great Powers. Of 
the eight recognized Great Powers in 1914, Austria-Hungary had 
ceased to exist by 1919, and Germany and Russia, at least tem- 
porarily, had been outclassed. Russia had become a pariah 
among the nations, thanks to her embracing of extreme socialism ; 
and Germany had lost her navy, her colonies, and her merchant 
marine and had declined from a position as the foremost military 
state in the world to virtual disarmament and impotence. 

In theory at any rate the new state-system was unlike the old. 
The old, as was pointed out in the opening pages of this book, 
was essentially anarchic ; it rested on the fancied self-sufficiency 
of each of its members, on series of alliances and ententes formed 
for selfish ends, and on balances of power and threats of war. 
The new system had gradually evolved from the exigencies of 
the Great War and had been enshrined in the Covenant of Ver- 
sailles; it was based on the concept of a League of Nations in 
which no state should presume to set its own interests above 
those of mankind at large, and on a contract according to which 
certain activities were recognized as of international concern 
rather than as within the restricted purview of individual nations. 
If the League of Nations flourished, if the new order became a 
reality, — and only the lapse of many years could tell, — then the 
old ascription of absolute and unrestricted sovereignty to each and 
every independent state would in time be revised, and out of the 
anarchic welter and chaos of modern times would succeed an 
organized Inter-Nation capable of preserving the peace of the 
world and of promoting the orderly development of human life. 
To the realization of such a dream the Great War pointed 
posterity. 

Without some sort of a League of Nations, the growth of na- 
tionalism during the war and its recognition by the Peace Con- 
gress might readily become a curse rather than a blessing. 
Merely to add ten or a dozen new national states to forty or 
fifty already existing, merely to "Balkanize" Central Europe, 
would render confusion worse confounded, if the new ones like 
the old should not receive a striking object-lesson, which un- 
fortunately at the outset they seemed all too prone to ignore, 
in the necessity of restraint and humility and cooperation, in 
uprooting the weeds of nationalism and cultivating only its 
best fruits. 

The League of Nations, as actually established in 1920, was 
none too strong. Excluded from its membership were not only 
Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, but also 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 399 

Russia and most of the states newly detached from the old Russian 
Empire ; and the United States seemed unwilling to adhere to 
it without "reservations" which further weakened it. Further- 
more, between the multitude of small states included in the 
League and the four Great Powers which at first practically 
controlled it, — Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, — 
there was a wide divergence of power and prestige. There were 
adverse critics a-plenty who insisted that the Covenant was 
primarily a cloak for the further aggrandizement of the four 
Great Powers at the expense of the rest. 

III. Imperialism. Superficially, at any rate, the Great War 
gave zest and zeal to the game of capitalistic imperialism. As 
nationalism was the goal of the smaller states, so imperialistic 
gains seemed to be the stakes of most of the Great Powers. Great 
Britain emerged from the war as the foremost maritime and co- 
lonial and industrial Power in the world ; she had humbled Ger- 
many, her latest rival, as completely as in earlier eras she had 
overcome the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the French ; to her al- 
ready far-flung empire were now added, in one form or another, 
some of the wealthiest provinces of the old Ottoman Empire, — 
Mesopotamia and Palestine, 1 — and the bulk of the German 
overseas possessions, — East Africa, Southwest Africa, parts of 
Kamerun and Togoland, and the Pacific islands south of the 
equator. She could now complete the construction of the Cape- 
to-Cairo railway exclusively on British soil, and by bringing Persia 2 
within her orbit of influence she could dominate economically and 
politically the vast expanse of land and water from Cairo and 
Damascus to Rangoon and Singapore. The richest regions of Asia 
and of Africa were hers. To be sure, these gains were shared by 
Great Britain with South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, 
for the British Empire, it should be remembered, was less a 
unitary state than an alliance of mother-country and self-govern- 
ing dominions ; nevertheless, they redounded to Anglo-Saxon 
prestige throughout the world and most substantially to the 
economic advantage of British capitalists within the United 
Kingdom. 

France emerged from the Great War as the foremost military 
state on the Continent of Europe. She was exalted as Germany 
was abased. Against the possibility of the military resurrection 

1 Great Britain also now exercised a veiled protectorate over Hedjaz and a 
greatly strengthened protectorate over Egypt. 

2 A treaty concluded in 1919 between Persia and Great Britain virtually recog- 
nized the former as constituting a "sphere of influence" of the latter. 



400 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of Germany she was now insured by possession of Strassburg and 
Metz, by a fifteen-year occupation of Mainz, and, she hoped, by 
a special defensive alliance with Great Britain and the United 
States. Moreover, she enjoyed a paramount influence alike in 
the military and in the economic policies of Poland, Czecho- 
slovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, and Greece ; most of the smaller 
states of Europe were her satellites. And outside of Europe, 
France maintained her position as a colonial and imperialistic 
Power second in importance only to Great Britain. To the 
French Empire were added "mandates" for Syria, Cilicia, and 
portions of Kamerun and Togoland, and a greatly strengthened 
protectorate of Morocco. 

Italy not only completed her national unification but assumed 
a leading imperialistic role in the Adriatic and in the eastern 
Mediterranean. She obtained a hold on Albania and Adalia 
and counted upon extensions of her territories and privileges in 
Tripoli, Cyrenaica, and Somaliland. 

Japan asserted and maintained a kind of Monroe Doctrine for 
China, that no European Power might increase its holdings in the 
Far East but that she herself might freely act as sponsor and 
guardian for the entire Chinese Empire. Specifically, she annexed 
the former German Pacific islands north of the equator and ac- 
quired the German rights and concessions in the Chinese province 
of Shantung. Less directly, she obtained at least a temporary 
hold on eastern Siberia. 

The United States gained nothing directly. Indirectly, how- 
ever, her participation in the Great War and her probable 
underwriting of the various treaties which concluded it marked 
her coming-of-age as a Great Power and as a World Power. On 
the one hand, she gained from Europe a formal recognition of the 
Monroe Doctrine ; on the other hand, she set a precedent for 
subsequent interference in the affairs of Asia not only but of 
Europe likewise. She departed from her traditional policy of 
avoiding "entangling alliances" with Old- World Powers; and 
if she should ratify either the Covenant of the League of Na- 
tions or the defensive treaty of alliance with France, or both, she 
would obviously have entered into novel international engage- 
ments and assumed new international obligations of far-reaching 
import. 

In fine, while Germany and Russia were turned from imperial- 
istic paths by the Great War, four of the five victorious Great 
Powers, and possibly the fifth, paved wide and deep the high- 
ways of their own imperialism. One concession was made, how- 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 401 

ever, to critics of imperialism, for most of the former German 
colonies were ceded to the several Allies not in full sovereignty 
but as "mandataries" of the League of Nations. In other 
words, the five Great Powers recognized the international, 
rather than the strictly national, character of capitalistic im- 
perialism. The very phrasing of one of the sections of the 
Covenant was eloquent of the new point of view and of prom- 
ise for the future : "To those colonies and territories which as a 
consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sover- 
eignty of the state which formerly governed them and which are 
inhabited by people not yet able to stand by themselves under 
the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be 
applied the principle that the well-being and development of such 
peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for 
the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant. 
The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that 
the tutelage of such peoples should be intrusted to advanced na- 
tions who by reason of their resources, their experience or their 
geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and 
who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be ex- 
ercised by them as mandataries on behalf of the League. 

"The character of the mandate must differ according to the 
stage of the development of the people, the geographical situation 
of the territory, its economic conditions and other similar cir- 
cumstances. Certain communities formerly belonging to the 
Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their 
existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized 
subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance 
by a mandatary until such time as they are able to stand alone ; 
the wishes of these communities must be a principal condition in 
the selection of the mandatary. Other peoples, especially those 
of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the mandatary must 
be responsible for the administration of the territory under con- 
ditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, 
subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the 
prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and 
the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of 
fortifications or military and naval bases and of military train- 
ing of the natives for other than police purposes and the defense 
of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade 
and commerce of other members of the League. There are terri- 
tories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of the South Pacific 
islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population or their 



402 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

small size, or their remoteness from the centers of civilization, 
or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the mandatary, 
and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws 
of the mandatary as integral portions of its territory, subject to 
the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous 
population. 

"In every case of mandate the mandatary shall render to the 
Council [of the League of Nations] an annual report in reference 
to the territory committed to its charge. The degree of author- 
ity, control, or administration to be exercised by the mandatary 
shall, if not previously agreed uoon by members of the League, 
be explicitly defined in each case by the Council. A permanent 
commission shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual 
reports of the mandataries and to advise the Council on all matters 
relating to the observance of the mandates." 

IV. Republicanism. The Great War was as advantageous to 
republicanism throughout the world as it was disastrous to mon- 
archy. In 1 9 14, six of the eight Great Powers were monarchical ; 
in 1 919, only three remained monarchical and these three — 
Great Britain, Italy, Japan, — had reconsecrated their political 
institutions by military victory. The three most famous dynas- 
ties — the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Hohenzollerns — 
had been worsted and had ceased to reign. From German lands 
had been chased out all those lesser historic sovereign families — • 
the Wittelsbachs, the Wettins, the Guelfs, etc. 1 Republics had 
replaced monarchies in Russia, in Germany, and in Austria ; 
and in the states newly created in Central Europe republican 
forms of government prevailed — in Poland, Czechoslovakia, 
Ukrainia, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, and Finland. Not only 
were the American continents almost wholly republican, but 
Europe was now predominantly so, and even in Asia the vast 
Chinese Empire was nominally republican. Divine-right mon- 
archy was at last extinct, except possibly in Japan ; even con- 
stitutional, liberal monarchy was on the decline. 

V. Political Democracy. Within most of the belligerent coun- 
tries radical political reforms of a democratic nature were fos- 
tered and hastened by the war. Throughout Central Europe, 
in Germany, in Austria, and in Hungary, as well as in the newly 

1 Individual kings were forced out of Greece and Bulgaria, but in both these 
countries monarchy survived. In the case of Montenegro, King Nicholas was de- 
posed in favor of King Peter of Serbia. In iqi8 there were ineffectual anti-royalist 
demonstrations in the Netherlands, in Sweden, and in Spain. A royalist uprising 
in Portugal against the republican government was easily put down. Only in 
Hungary was there, in 1920, a popular drift from republicanism back ten monarchy. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 403 

erected states of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Finland, a host of 
new constitutions were written providing pretty uniformly for 
representative government, ministerial responsibility, and guar- 
antees of personal liberties. In Germany and in Austria full 
woman suffrage on the same basis as that of men was accorded 
by the new constitutions ; it was an appropriate recognition of 
the significant role which women had played in the Great War 
as well as a logical interpretation of the spirit of political democ- 
racy. In Great Britain, too, the franchise was granted to most 
women, while in the United States a constitutional amendment 
providing for general woman suffrage was approved by the Con- 
gress and submitted to the federated States for ratification. In 
France, a bill granting the franchise to women passed the Cham- 
ber of Deputies and barely missed passage through the Senate. 
In Italy, a woman-suffrage bill was pending in 1920. 

In Great Britain the electoral reforms of 1832, 1867, and 1884- 
1885 were consolidated and supplemented by an important Elec- 
toral Reform Bill enacted in 19 18. Anomalies of former acts 
were effaced and much-needed uniformity was secured. Here- 
after, a general election was to be held everywhere on the same 
day ; no person could vote in more than two. constituencies ; the 
franchise was extended to all men who were twenty-one years of 
age and had maintained a residence or place of business for six 
months, to all women who were thirty years of age and had owned 
or tenanted premises for six months or were married to men who 
owned or tenanted premises, and to veterans of the war who were 
nineteen years of age ; the principle of proportional representa- 
tion was to be applied to university constituencies returning two 
or more members ; and a redistribution of seats was effected, 
whereby there would be one member for every 70,000 of the 
population in Great Britain, and one for every 43,000 in Ireland, 
so that the total membership of the House of Commons would 
be increased from 670 to 707. * 

In France, a long-debated Electoral Reform Bill, which had 
been repeatedly passed by the Chamber and as repeatedly blocked 
by the Senate, was finally enacted in 1919. Under its terms, the 
scrutin de liste was substituted for the scrutin d'arrondissement, 

1 The first general elections, under this Reform Act, were held in December, 
1918, and gave a decisive verdict in favor of the Lloyd George Coalition Govern- 
ment. The distribution of seats in the new House of Commons was as follows: 
Coalitionists, 471 (334 Unionists, 127 Liberals, 10 Laborites) ; Opposition, 236 
(46 Unionists, 37 Asquith Liberals, 65 Laborites, 1 Socialist, 7 Irish Nationalists, 
73 Sinn Feiners, 7 Independents). In Great Britain the position of the Conserva- 
tive Unionists was greatly strengthened, and in Ireland that of the Sinn Fein. 



404 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

and the principle of proportional representation was recognized 
and adopted. In Belgium likewise the year 1919 witnessed an 
electoral reform, by which the system of plural voting was abol- 
ished and that of one-man-one-vote was introduced. In Ru- 
mania, 1 too, universal suffrage was substituted for the undemo- 
cratic device of the three-class system which in earlier years had 
been borrowed from Prussia. 

VI. Temporary Impatience with Popular Government. Though 
the outcome of the Great War was distinctly favorable to the 
cause of republicanism and of political democracy, temporarily 
at least there was not unnatural impatience with popular govern- 
ment. In the midst of the war, when the fortunes of the Central 
Powers reached full-tide and those of the Allies appeared to ebb, 
many persons felt and expressed doubt of democracy and liberty ; 
they pointed to Teutonic success as proof positive of the inherent 
superiority, at any rate in times of stress and strife, of autocracy 
over democracy, of obedience over freedom; they complained 
bitterly of the inefficiency of popular government and of the li- 
cense of popular criticism ; and they sought to destroy Autoc- 
racy by resorting to methods quite autocratic. In part the 
Allied Governments responded to these feelings and complaints ; 
everywhere the machinery of political democracy was supple- 
mented, and in some instances well-nigh supplanted, by a bureau- 
cracy of "experts," dependent upon a dictatorial "War 
Cabinet " ; parliaments became chiefly " rubber-stamps " for regis- 
tering and recording the decisions of the. Government ; and in- 
dividual liberties were substantially abridged. In all belligerent 
countries a censorship, open or veiled, was rigorously maintained ; 
and constitutional guarantees of the freedom of association, meet- 
ing, and publication, were practically set aside, either by formal 
statutory restriction, or, more often, by direct action on the part 
of outraged patriots. In the passions and hysteria of the Great 
War, majorities proved themselves utterly intolerant of minor- 
ities, and even majorities were impatient of the slow and ponder- 
ous workings of the usual engines of orderly political democracy. 

How much of this was merely episodical to the war, time alone 
will tell. Undoubtedly most of it arose out of military exigen- 
cies and will disappear with them. But it may not be idle to 
conjecture that in the age-long struggle between the principle of 

1 The disasters which overtook Rumania from 1916 to 1018 led not only to 
political reform but also to a noteworthy social transformation, for the large landed 
estates were broken up and distributed, with compensation to their former owners, 
among the numerous and needy peasantry. 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 405 

governmental authority and that of personal liberty, the Great 
War aided the former to the detriment of the latter. 1 \ Nor might 
it be wholly beside the point to hazard the guess that the political 
democracy of the future would undergo a noteworthy transforma- 
tion in letter if not in spirit : democracy might be rendered more 
real and more effective if it were based on social groupings rather 
than on territorial divisions, if "experts" were accorded a more 
honorable and appropriate place within it, and if its machinery 
were simplified and applied less reservedly to social ends, to the 
well-being of a whole community. To reform political democracy 
and to extend its operation to industry and commerce was a bur- 
den imposed upon progressive nations by the Great War. ^^ 

VII. Habit of Resorting to Force. In the Great War, Germany 
had employed armed force in order to impose her peculiar Kultur 
upon the world, and the Allies had developed and utilized a su- 
perior armed force in order to curb Teutonic ambitions and to 
preserve their own freedom and independence. For four years 
and more the fate of the bulk of mankind had hung, not upon or- 
derly, peaceful evolution, but upon violence and force, — "force 
to the utmost, force without stint or limit." And men who had 
been taught by the most practical examples and experiences that 
force was the righteous arbiter in the gravest of all international 
questions were dangerously but naturally inclined to resort to a 
forceful and illegal settlement of domestic differences. "Direct 
action" was too frequently invoked during the Great War, and 
at its close, both by ultra-conservatives and by ultra-radicals. 

In economic matters as well as in purely political questions 
revolutionary aims and revolutionary methods were increasingly 
championed. On one side, reactionary statesmen and reaction- 
ary capitalists counseled the governments to refuse popular de- 
mands for political and economic reforms and to employ soldiers, 
if necessary, to back up their refusal. On the other hand, groups 
of fanatical agitators preached class-warfare and the violent over- 
turn of "bourgeois" government and society. The career of the 
Bolsheviki in Russia was made possible only by a condition and 
a state of mind engendered by the Great War. And only the 
habitual resort to force explained fully the policy which the Allies 
pursued in 1919 of attempting to overthrow the Bolsheviki by 
foreign intervention. 

With the passing of war-psychology, the human mind will 
probably return gradually to a quieter and more normal state. 

1 A case in point is the enactment of permanent prohibition of alcoholic bev- 
erages throughout the United States (191 8). 



406 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

But in the meantime, for at least a generation, the world will 
be laboring to throw off the inherited incubus of terrorism and 
violence. In all countries, particularly in those which have suf- 
fered most in the Great War, a high degree of character, intelli- 
gence, and self-restraint will be required of the whole citizenry 
if, as a final outcome of the Great War, liberty is not to de- 
generate into license and civilization into barbarism. 

VIII. Social Tendencies. The Great War strengthened cer- 
tain tendencies which had been developing in the social order of 
the preceding era and inaugurated new ones : 

(a) There was a marked increase of state socialism and of state 
intervention in labor disputes. Systems of transportation and 
communication were pretty generally taken over and managed 
by the governments ; hours of labor were regulated, as were also 
in many instances wages and profits ; and in some cases whole 
war-industries were maintained and operated by public author- 
ities. In Great Britain, the Labor Party demanded (January, 
1918) the permanent nationalization of land, railways, and mines. 

(b) There was an increased influence, on the one hand, of bank- 
ers and great financiers, and, on the other hand, of labor organ- 
izations. " Profiteering " on the part of producers of war materiel 
and of dealers in foodstuffs was accompanied by unusual pros- 
perity of farmers and by an unprecedented rise of wages of day- 
laborers. Salaried and professional men suffered disproportion- 
ately from the parallel rise in the cost of living. Trade-unionists 
enormously increased their influence both by reason of the greater 
demand for their individual service and by reason of their per- 
fected organization and their consequent gain in collective bar- 
gaining. 

(c) There was a new vogue of Marxian Socialism. Socialists 
controlled Russia from the time of the Bolshevist Revolution in 
November, 191 7; they played prominent roles in the revolu- 
tionary movements in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, in 1918, 
and they were more vocal than ever in Italy, in France, in Great 
Britain, and in the United States. Nevertheless they were much 
divided among themselves on aims and tactics : generally, in 
Allied countries, they had learned to cooperate loyally with bour- 
geois governments, while in Germany and Austria the majority 
of them found no great difficulty in sharing responsibility for the 
new revolutionary governments with Catholic parties ; in Russia, 
the Bolshevist Socialists in attempting to carry the teachings of 
Marx into practice, profoundly modified the historic traditions 
of their party and succeeded in alienating not only the mass of 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 



407 



non-Socialists throughout the world but the majority of Socialists 
in foreign countries and a large number of Russian Socialists. 
It seemed as though the Great War had cleft Marxian Socialism 
asunder : one wing was so fully committed to force and violence 
as to nullify Marx's political doctrines ; the other wing was so 
completely given to compromise as to postpone indefinitely the 
realization of Marx's economic program. Socialism might be 
the goal of the future, but it was likely to be attained, if at all, 
through middle-class cooperation rather than by the unaided ef- 
forts of old-fashioned doctrinaire Marxian Socialists. 

(d) Over against the manifest tendency toward state socialism 
appeared, curiously enough, a counter-tendency toward what for 
lack of a better phrase may be termed gild socialism. By this 
term is meant all those expedients, such as profit-sharing, shop- 
stewards, joint management, etc., by which the workers would 
gradually gain control, and then ownership, of industries, and 
thus secure direct industrial democracy without the interposition 
of the state except as a regulator and accelerator of the process 
and as a protector of the interests of the public. Certainly con- 
siderable progress was made in Great Britain, in the United States, 
in France, in Italy, and in Germany, in 1918 and in 1919, toward 
admitting representatives of the workers to boards of directors of 
various industrial establishments and toward sharing profits be- 
tween capitalists and workingmen. 

Many persons professed to see in gild socialism the most prac- 
ticable solution of the perplexing but all-important problem of 
improving the condition of the working classes without decreas- 
ing production, and at the same time the most promising antidote 
alike to state socialism, with its dangerous bureaucracy, and to 
Marxian Socialism, with its destructive class-hatred. • Gild social- 
ism in industry, taken in conjunction with an agricultural pro- 
gram of small holdings and of cooperation in production, buying 
and selling, might provide the basis for a significant social trans- 
formation during the ensuing century. It should be remarked in 
this connection that among many groups espousing such an evolu- 
tion the Social Catholics were particularly active at the close of 
the Great War : it was the burden of the platforms of the Center 
Party in Germany, of the Christian Socialist Party in Austria, 
of the Democratic Party in Poland, of the Clericals in Belgium, 
of the Action Liberate in France, and' of the newly formed Catho- 
lic Popular Party in Italy ; it received the endorsement of the 
Catholic War Council of the United States. 

(e) Whatever might be thought of the relative value of schemes 



4 o8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

of state socialism and gild socialism, there was certainly in the 
popular mind at the close of the Great War a firmer conviction 
than ever before that social reforms and readjustments were 
imperatively needed, that cooperation must be substituted for 
competition. Just how this conviction would be translated into 
action, none could predict with assurance ; that it would involve 
an eclectic choice of the best points in all existing social theories 
— capitalism, socialism, state-intervention, trade-unionism, 
profit-sharing, and industrial democracy — admitted of little 
doubt. At any rate it was evident that the world was quite done 
with the economic individualism of the preceding century. As 
the British Labor Party said in its famous "reconstruction" pro- 
nouncement of January, 1918 : "The individualist system of 
capitalist production . . . may, we hope, have received a death- 
blow. With it must go the political system and ideas in which 
it naturally found expression. We of the Labor Party, whether 
in opposition or in due time called upon to form an admin- 
istration, will certainly lend no hand to its revival. If we in 
Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itself we 
must insure that what is presently to be built up is a new social 
order, based not on fighting, but on fraternity, — not on the 
competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliber- 
ately planned cooperation in production and distribution for the 
benefit of all, — not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, 
but on a systematic approach toward a healthy equality of mate- 
rial circumstances for every person, — not on an enforced do- 
minion over subject nations, subject races, subject colonies, sub- 
ject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in 
government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness 
of consent, and that widest possible participation in power, 
both economic and political, which is characteristic of democ- 
racy. We do not, of course, pretend that it is possible, even 
after the drastic clearing away that is now going on, to build 
society anew in a year or two of feverish 'reconstruction.' What 
the Labor Party intends to satisfy itself about is that each brick 
that it helps to lay shall go to erect the structure that it intends, 
and no other." 

IX. Science and Education. The Great War gave an impetus 
to certain applications of experimental science. Thus, there was 
an extraordinary development not only of strictly military weap- 
ons such as heavy artillery, machine guns, poisonous gases, 
tanks, airplanes, and submarines, but also of devices and imple- 
ments which could be put to important commercial uses in the 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 409 

subsequent era of peace. To this category belonged the gradual 
perfecting of all sorts of aircraft, so that in 1919 government mails 
were being regularly transported by airplane between chief cities 
in the United States, and British and American air pilots were 
crossing the Atlantic in their frail, high-powered bird-ships. To 
this category belonged also the development of wireless telephony 
and of devices for detecting sounds in water. Likewise Great 
Britain and the United States were forced by circumstances of the 
war to improve their chemical and dyeing industries and to bring 
them up to a par with those of Germany. 

In their endeavors to return wounded men to something like 
their former condition army surgeons accomplished marvels, and 
surgery developed in the course of the war to a point which ordi- 
narily would have taken many years to attain. Considerable 
progress was made, moreover, in the sciences of sanitation and 
preventive medicine, in the age-long struggle against venereal 
disease, and in psycho-analysis and other methods of treating 
mental disorders. Psychology of groups as well as of individuals 
was studied scientifically ; and in colleges and universities every- 
where there was an immensely magnified interest in the social 
sciences — in politics, in economics, in sociology, and in recent 
history. 

To the thousands of young men of every nation who partici- 
pated in the Great War and survived it the experiences in camp 
and on the field possessed undoubted educational value. Most 
of these young men had formerly not traveled far from home, but 
during the war they were perpetually on the move, and they must 
have received a tremendous number of significant impressions 
which they could have received in no other way. The barbarian 
migrations of early centuries and the Crusades of the Middle Ages 
have long been pointed to as educational tours of the greatest 
importance ; yet neither the Crusades nor the barbarian mi- 
grations affected nearly so many persons or embraced such ex- 
tended regions as did the Great War. In the Great War, whole 
nations were in arms ; millions of Russians sojourned in Germany, 
millions of Austrians in Russia, millions of Germans and English- 
men in France ; and the trip of two million young Americans to 
Europe surpassed any educational tour ever planned by Cook's 
or other commercial firm. 

The influence of education upon the development of a nation's 
ideals as well as upon the efficiency of an army was clearly per- 
ceived in the case of Germany ; and one Allied government after 
another sought while the war was still in progress to supplement 



410 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

the work of the public schools at home by conducting school- 
classes among the troops at the front. In Great Britain, a radical 
and far-reaching Education Bill, sponsored by Herbert Fisher, 
the secretary of education in the Lloyd George cabinet, was en- 
acted in 1918. 

X. Religion. The Great War produced no spectacular re- 
ligious "revival," as had been predicted. It did promote, how- 
ever, closer cooperation than had ever before obtained among 
Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even Mohammedans. In the 
case of the United States, the joint endeavors of the Young 
Men's Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus, the 
Jewish Welfare Board, and the Salvation Army served both to 
maintain the high morale of the troops at the front and to pro- 
mote among the civilian population at home a greater interest 
in religious organizations. In the case of all countries, neutrals 
as well as belligerents, the International Red Cross Society 
performed great and noble service for mankind. Among Chris- 
tians outside of the Roman communion there were renewed 
efforts to secure some sort of organic church unity. 

On the whole, though Pope Benedict XV was denounced by 
some Allied citizens as pro- German and by some Germans as too 
pro-Ally, the Catholic Church was ably guided during the Great 
War and remained true to its high ideals. Politically it occupied 
a better position at the close of the struggle than at the beginning ; 
without materially impairing the prestige of the Catholic Center 
Party in Germany, Catholic Belgium had been vindicated, 
Catholic Poland had been reborn, Portugal had resumed diplo- 
matic relations with the Holy See, Great Britain had sent an 
envoy to the Vatican, and a more cordial attitude toward the 
Church had been evinced by both France and Italy. Though 
the Italian Government successfully prevented the pope from 
raising the "Roman Question," the Vatican obtained from the 
Peace Congress a solemn guarantee of the inviolability of the 
property of Christian missions abroad. The ardor with which 
Catholics supported the new national movements and espoused 
programs of social reform was a tribute to the continuing vital- 
ity of their faith. 

If the Great War did not immediately redound to the advan- 
tage of any particular ecclesiastical system, it at any rate dealt 
a body-blow at those doctrines of materialism and determinism 
which had been taking root everywhere throughout the nineteenth 
century and which had flourished and flowered mightily and poi- 
sonously in Germany on the eve of the final conflict. Once more 



A NEW ERA BEGINS 411 

"spiritualism" came to the fore; man grew interested again in 
the phenomena of the "unseen" ; and again absolute standards 
of right could be referred to with no more cynical smiling than 
was occasioned by mention of relative standards of might. Not 
the struggle for existence between each two specimens of the hu- 
man species was to be the "natural" rule for the future, but the 
natural order was to be one with the supernatural, that all men 
are brothers and that in unselfish cooperation lies the hope of 
humanity and civilization. 

Cooperation was the chief lesson taught by the Great War. 
No divine-right monarch could henceforth set his will above that 
of the nation — such was the moral of the first Russian Revolu- 
tion. No single social class could henceforth dominate a whole 
community — such was the moral of the two Russian Revolutions 
and likewise of the upheavals throughout Central Europe. No 
one nation could henceforth set itself above all others and domi- 
nate the whole world — • such was the moral of the defeat and col- 
lapse of Germany. Cooperation between social classes, cooper- 
ation between nations — these were to be the watchwords and 
countersigns of the new era. From the ruinous competition in 
industrial life and the mad anarchy in international relations, 
which held sway in 1914, to the cooperative enterprise and the 
League of Nations of 1920 was a far cry. The revolution was 
due to the turmoil and terrors and travail of the Great War. 



APPENDIX I 

THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

The high contracting parties, in order to promote interna- 
tional cooperation and to achieve international peace and 
security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by 
the prescription of open, just, and honorable relations between 
nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of inter- 
national law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, 
and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for 
all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with 
one another, agree to this covenant of the League of Nations. 

Article i. — The original members of the League of Nations 
shall be those of the signatories which are named in the annex 
to this covenant and also such of those other States named in 
the annex as shall accede without reservation to this covenant. 
Such accession shall be effected by a declaration deposited with 
the secretariat within two months of the coming into force of the 
covenant. Notice shall be sent to all other members of the 
League. 

Any fully self-governing State, dominion, or colony not named 
in the annex may become a member of the League if its admission 
is agreed to by two-thirds of the assembly, provided that it shall 
give effective guarantee of its sincere intention to observe its 
international obligations, and shall accept such regulations as 
may be prescribed by the League in regard to its military, naval 
and air forces and armaments. 

Any member of the League may, after two years' notice of its 
intention so to do, withdraw from the League, provided that all 
its international obligations and all its obligations under this 
covenant shall have been fulfilled at the time of its withdrawal. 

Article 2. — The action of the League under this covenant 
shall be effected through the instrumentality of an assembly 
and of a council, with a permanent secretariat. 

Article 3. — The assembly shall consist of representatives 
of the members of the League. 

413 



414 APPENDIX I 

The assembly shall meet at stated intervals and from time to 
time as occasion may require at the seat of the League or at such 
other place as may be decided upon. 

The assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within 
the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the 
world. 

At meetings of the assembly each member of the League shall 
have one vote, and may have not more than three representatives. 

Article 4. — The council shall consist of representatives of 
the principal Allied and Associated Powers, together with repre- 
sentatives of four other members of the League. These four 
members of the League shall be selected by the assembly from 
time to time in its discretion. Until the appointment of the 
representatives of the four members of the League first selected 
by the assembly, representatives of Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and 
Greece shall be members of the council. 

With the approval of the majority of the assembly, the council 
may name additional members of the League whose representa- 
tives shall always be members of the council ; the council with 
like approval may increase the number of members of the League 
to be selected by the assembly for representation on the council. 

The council shall meet from time to time as occasion may re- 
quire, and at least once a year, at the seat of the League, or at 
such other place as may be decided upon. 

The council may deal at its meetings with any matter within the 
sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world. 

Any member of the League not represented on the council shall 
be invited to send a representative to sit as a member at any 
meeting of the council during the consideration of matters 
specially affecting the interests of that member of the League. 

At meetings of the council, each member of the League repre- 
sented on the council shall have one vote, and may have not 
more than one representative. 

Article 5. — Except where otherwise expressly provided in 
this covenant or by the terms of the present treaty, decisions 
at any meeting of the assembly or of the council shall require 
the agreement of all the members of the League represented at 
the meeting. 

All matters of procedure at meetings of the assembly or of the 
council, including the appointment of committees to investi- 
gate particular matters, shall be regulated by the assembly or by 
the council and may be decided by a majority of the members of 
the League represented at the meeting. 



THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 415 

The first meeting of the assembly and the first meeting of the 
council shall be summoned by the President of the United States 
of America. 

Article 6. — The permanent secretariat shall be established 
at the seat of the League. The secretariat shall comprise a 
Secretary General and such secretaries and staff as may be re- 
quired. 

The first Secretary General shall be the person named in the 
annex ; thereafter the Secretary General shall be appointed by 
the council with the approval of the majority of the assembly. 

The secretaries and staff of the secretariat shall be appointed 
by the Secretary General with the approval of the council. 

The Secretary General shall act in that capacity at all meet- 
ings of the assembly and of the council. 

The expenses of the secretariat shall be borne by the members 
of the League in accordance with the apportionment of the ex- 
penses of the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union. 

Article 7. — The seat of the League is established at Geneva. 

The council may at any time decide that the seat of the League 
shall be established elsewhere. 

All positions under or in connection with the League, includ- 
ing the secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women. 

Representatives of the members of the League and officials of 
the League when engaged on business of the League shall enjoy 
diplomatic privileges and immunities. 

The buildings and other property occupied by the League or 
its officials or by representatives attending its meetings shall be 
inviolable. 

Article 8. — • The members of the League recognize that the 
maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national arma- 
ments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the 
enforcement by common action of international obligations. 

The council, taking account of the geographical situation and 
circumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such re- 
duction for the consideration and action of the several govern- 
ments. 

Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at 
least every ten years. 

After these plans shall have been adopted by the several gov- 
ernments, the limits of the armaments therein fixed shall not be 
exceeded without the concurrence of the council. 

The members of the League agree that the manufacture by 
private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open 



4 i 6 APPENDIX I 

to grave objections. The council shall advise how the evil 
effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due 
regard being had to the necessities of those members of the 
League which are not able to manufacture the munitions and 
implements of war necessary for their safety. 

The members of the League undertake to interchange full and 
frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their mili- 
tary and naval program and the condition of such of their 
industries as are adaptable to warlike purposes. 

Article 9. — • A permanent commission shall be constituted 
to advise the council on the execution of the provisions of Article 
1 and 8 and on military and naval questions generally. 

Article 10. — The members of the League undertake to 
respect and preserve as against external aggression the terri- 
torial integrity and existing political independence of all mem- 
bers of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of 
any threat or danger of such aggression the council shall advise 
upon the means upon which this obligation shall be fulfilled. 

Article ii. — • Any war or threat of war, whether imme- 
diately affecting any of the members of the League or not, is 
hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the 
League shall take any action that shall be deemed wise and 
effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. In case any such 
emergency should arise the Secretary General shall on the re- 
quest of any member of the League forthwith summon a meeting 
of the council. 

It is also declared to be the friendly right of each member of 
the League to bring to the attention of the assembly or of the 
council any circumstances whatever affecting international re- 
lations which threaten to disturb international peace or the 
good understanding between nations upon which peace depends. 

Article 12. — The members of the League agree that if there 
should arise between them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, 
they will submit the matter either to arbitration or to inquiry 
by the council, and they agree in no case to resort to war until 
three months after the award by the arbitrators or the report by 
the council. 

In any case under this article the award of the arbitrators shall 
be made within a reasonable time, and the report of the council 
shall be made within six months after the submission of the dis- 
pute. 

Article 13. — The members of the League agree that when- 
ever any dispute shall arise between them which they recognize 



THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 417 

to be suitable for submission to arbitration and which cannot 
be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy, they will submit the whole 
subject-matter to arbitration. 

Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question 
of international law, as to the existence of any fact which if 
established would constitute a breach of any international obli- 
gation, or as to the extent and nature of the reparation to be made 
for any such breach, are declared to be among those which are 
generally suitable for submission to arbitration. 

For the consideration of any such dispute the Court of Arbi- 
tration to which the case is referred shall be the court agreed on by 
the parties to the dispute or stipulated in any convention exist- 
ing between them. 

The members of the League agree that they will carry out in 
full good faith any award that may be rendered, and that they 
will not resort to war against a member of the League which com- 
plies therewith. In the event of any failure to carry out such an 
award, the council shall propose what steps should be taken to 
give effect thereto. 

Article 14. — The council shall formulate and submit to the 
members of the League for adoption plans for the establishment 
of a Permanent Court of International Justice. The court shall 
be competent to hear and determine any dispute of an inter- 
national character which the parties thereto submit to it. The 
court may also give an advisory opinion upon any dispute or 
question referred to it by the council or by the assembly. 

Article 15. — If there should arise between members of the 
League any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, which is not sub- 
mitted to arbitration in accordance with Article 13, the members 
of the League agree that they will submit the matter to the 
council. Any party to the dispute may effect such submission 
by giving notice of the existence of the dispute to the Secretary 
General, who will make all necessary arrangements for a full 
investigation and consideration thereof. 

For this purpose the parties to the dispute will communicate 
to the Secretary General, as promptly as possible, statements 
of their case with all relevant facts and papers, and the council 
may forthwith direct the publication thereof. 

The council shall endeavor to effect a settlement of the dis- 
pute, and if such efforts are successful, a statement shall be made 
public giving such facts and explanations regarding the dispute 
and the terms of settlement thereof as the council may deem 
appropriate. 

2 E 



4 i 8 APPENDIX I 

If the dispute is not thus settled, the council either unanimously 
or by a majority vote shall make and publish a report containing 
a statement of the facts of the dispute and the recommendations 
which are deemed just and proper in regard thereto. 

Any member of the League represented on the council may 
make public a statement of the facts of the dispute and of its 
conclusions regarding the same. 

If a report by the council is unanimously agreed to by the 
members thereof other than the representatives of one or more 
of the parties to the dispute, the members of the League agree 
that they will not go to war with any party to the dispute which 
complies with the recommendations of the report. 

If the council fails to reach a report which is unanimously 
agreed to by the members thereof other than the representatives 
of one or more of the parties to the dispute, the members of the 
League reserve to themselves the right to take such action as they 
shall consider necessary for the maintenance of right and justice. 

If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, 
and is found by the council to arise out of a matter which by 
international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of 
that party, the council shall so report, and shall make no recom- 
mendation as to its settlement. 

The council may in any case under this article refer the dis- 
pute to the assembly. The dispute shall be so referred at the 
request of either party to the dispute, provided that such re- 
quest be made within fourteen days after the submission of the 
dispute to the council. 

In any case referred to the assembly all the provisions of this 
article and of Article 12 relating to the action and powers of the 
council shall apply to the action and powers of the assembly, pro- 
vided that a report made by the assembly, if concurred in by the 
representatives of those members of the League represented on 
the council and of a majority of the other members of the 
League, exclusive in each case of the representatives of the 
parties to the dispute, shall have the same force as a report by 
the council concurred in by all the members thereof other than 
the representatives of one or more of the parties to the dispute. 

Article 16. — Should any member of the League resort to 
war in disregard of its covenants under Articles 12, 13, or 15, it 
shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war 
against all other members of the League, which hereby under- 
take immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or 
financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between 



THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 419 

their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State, 
and the prevention of all financial, commercial, or personal inter- 
course between the nationals of the covenant-breaking State and 
the nationals of any other State, whether a member of the League 
or not. 

It shall be the duty of the council in such case to recommend 
to the several governments concerned what effective military, 
naval or air force the members of the League shall severally con- 
tribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants 
of the League. 

The members of the League agree, further, that they will 
mutually support one another in the financial and economic 
measures which are taken under this article, in order to mini- 
mize the loss and inconvenience resulting from the above meas- 
ures, and that they will mutually support one another in resist- 
ing any special measures aimed at one of their number by the 
covenant-breaking State, and that they will take the necessary 
steps to afford passage through their territory to the forces of 
any of the members of the League which are cooperating to pro- 
tect the covenants of the League. 

Any member of the League which has violated any covenant 
of the League may be declared to be no longer a member of the 
League by a vote of the council concurred in by the representa- 
tives of all the other members of the League represented thereon. 

Article 17. — In the event of a dispute between a member of 
the League and a State which is not a member of the League, or 
between States not members of the League, the State or States not 
members of the League shall be invited to accept the obligations 
of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, 
upon such conditions as the council may deem just. If such 
invitation is accepted, the provisions of Articles 12 to 16 inclu- 
sive shall be applied with such modifications as may be deemed 
necessary by the council. 

Upon such invitation being given the council shall immediately 
institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the dispute and 
recommend such action as may seem best and most effectual 
in the circumstances. 

If a State so invited shall refuse to accept the obligations of 
membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, and 
shall resort to war against a member of the League, the pro- 
visions of Article 16 shall be applicable as against the State 
taking such action. 

If both parties to the dispute when so invited refuse to accept 



4 20 APPENDIX I 

the obligations of membership in the League for the purposes of 
such dispute, the council may take such measures and make such 
recommendations as will prevent hostilities and will result in the 
settlement of the dispute. 

Article 18. — Every treaty or international engagement 
entered into hereafter by any member of the League shall be 
forthwith registered with the Secretariat and shall as soon as 
possible be published by it. No such treaty or international 
engagement shall be binding until so registered. 

Article 19. — The assembly may from time to time advise 
the reconsideration by members of the League of treaties which 
have become inapplicable and the consideration of international 
conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the 
world. 

Article 20. — The members of the League severally agree 
that this covenant is accepted as abrogating all obligations or 
understandings inter se which are inconsistent with the terms 
thereof, and solemnly undertake that they will not hereafter 
enter into any engagements inconsistent with the terms thereof. 

In case any member of the League shall, before becoming a 
member of the League, have undertaken any obligations incon- 
sistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the duty of 
such member to take immediate steps to procure its release from 
such obligations. 

Article 21. — Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to 
affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties 
of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doc- 
trine, for securing the maintenance of peace. 

Article 22. — To those colonies and territories which as a 
consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sov- 
ereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which 
are inhabited by peoples not able to stand by themselves under 
the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be 
applied the principle that the well-being and development 
of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that 
securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied 
in this covenant. 

The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is 
that the tutelage of such peoples should be intrusted to advanced 
nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their 
geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and 
who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be ex- 
ercised by them as mandataries on behalf of the League. 



THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 421 

The character of the mandate must differ according to the stage 
of the development of the people, the geographical situation of 
the territory, its economic conditions and other similar circum- 
stances. 

Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish 
Empire have reached a stage of development where their exist- 
ence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized 
subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance 
by a mandatary until such time as they are able to stand alone. 
The wishes of these communities must be a principal considera- 
tion in the selection of the mandatary. 

Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such 
a stage that the mandatary must be responsible for the adminis- 
tration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee 
freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the mainte- 
nance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such 
as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and the 
prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and 
naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than 
police purposes and the defense of territory, and will also secure 
equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members 
of the League. 

There are territories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of 
the South Pacific islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their 
population or their small size, or their remoteness from the 
centers of civilization, or their geographical contiguity to the 
territory of the mandatary, and other circumstances, can be 
best administered under the laws of the mandatary as integral 
portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above men- 
tioned in the interests of the indigenous population. 

In every case of mandate the mandatary shall render to the 
council an annual report in reference to the territory committed 
to its charge. 

The degree of authority, control, or administration to be 
exercised by the mandatary shall, if not previously agreed upon 
by the members of the League, be explicitly defined in each case 
by the council. 

A permanent commission shall be constituted to receive and 
examine the annual reports of the mandataries and to advise the 
council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates. 

Article 23. — Subject to and in accordance with the pro- 
visions of international conventions existing or hereafter to be 
agreed upon, the members of the League : 



422 APPENDIX I 

(a) will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane 
conditions of labor for men, women, and children, both in their 
own countries and in all countries to which their commercial 
and industrial relations extend, and for that purpose will estab- 
lish and maintain the necessary international organizations; 

(b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabit- 
ants of territories under their control; 

(c) will intrust the League with the general supervision over 
the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women 
and children and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs ; 

(d) will intrust the League with the general supervision of 
the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries to which 
the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest ; 

(e) will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of 
communications and of transit and equitable treatment for the 
commerce of all members of the League. In this connection the 
special necessities of the regions devastated during the war of 
1914-1918 shall be borne in mind ; 

(/) will endeavor to take steps in matters of international 
concern for the prevention and control of disease. 

Article 24. — There shall be placed under the direction of 
the League all international bureaus already established by 
general treaties if the parties to such treaties consent All such 
international bureaus and all commissions for the regulation of 
matters of international interest hereafter constituted shall be 
placed under the direction of the League. 

In all matters of international interest which are regulated by 
general conventions but which are not placed under the control 
of international bureaus or commissions, the secretariat of the 
League shall, subject to the consent of the council and if desired 
by the parties, collect and distribute all relevant information 
and shall render any other assistance which may be necessary 
or desirable. 

The council may include as part of the expenses of the secre- 
tariat the expenses of any bureau or commission which is placed 
under the direction of the League. 

Article 25. — The members of the League agree to encourage 
and promote the establishment and cooperation of duly author- 
ized voluntary national Red Cross organizations having as pur- 
poses the improvement of health, the prevention of disease, and 
the mitigation of suffering throughout the world. 

Article 26. — Amendments to this covenant will take effect 
when ratified by the members of the League whose representa- 



THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 423 

tives compose the council and by a majority of the members of 
the League whose representatives compose the assembly. 

No such amendment shall bind any member of the League 
which signifies its dissent therefrom, but in that case it shall cease 
to be a member of the League. 

ANNEX. 

I. Original members of the League of "Nations signatories of 
the treaty of peace. 

United States of America Haiti 

Belgium Hedjaz 

Bolivia Honduras 

Brazil Italy 

British Empire Japan 

Canada Liberia 

Australia Nicaragua 

South Africa Panama 

New Zealand Peru 

India Poland 

China Portugal 

Cuba Rumania 

Ecuador Serb-Croat-Slovene State 

France Siam 

Greece Czecho-Slovakia 

Guatemala Uruguay 

States invited to accede to the covenant. 

Argentine Republic Persia 

Chile Salvador 

Colombia Spain 

Denmark Sweden 

Netherlands Switzerland 

Norway Venezuela 
Paraguay 

II. First Secretary General of the League of Nations. The 
Honorable Sir James Eric Drummond, K.C.M.G., C.B. 



APPENDIX II 

AMERICAN RESERVATIONS TO THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES 

(Adopted by majority vote of the United States Senate on November 8, 
iqiq, and again, with minor modifications, in March, 1920. President 
Wilson consistently opposed them, however, and on both occasions their 
proponents failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote of the United 
States Senate to assure American ratification of the treaty of Versailles 
with these Reservations.) 

That the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the 
treaty of peace with Germany concluded at Versailles on the 
28th day of June, 1919, subject to the following reservations 
and understandings, which are hereby made a part and condi- 
tion of this resolution of ratification, which ratification is not 
to take effect or bind the United States until the said reservations 
and understandings adopted by the Senate have been accepted 
by an exchange of notes as a part and a condition of this reso- 
lution of ratification by at least three of the four principal allied 
and associated powers, to wit, Great Britain, France, Italy, and 
Japan : 

1. The United States so understands and construes Article 
I. that in case of notice of withdrawal from the League of Nations, 
as provided in said article, the United States shall be the sole 
judge as to whether all its international obligations and all its 
obligations under- the said covenant have been fulfilled, and 
notice of withdrawal by the United States may be given by a 
concurrent resolution of the Congress of the United States. 

2. The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the 
territorial integrity or political independence of any other country 
or to interfere in controversies between nations — whether 
members of the League or not — under the provisions of Article 
X., or to employ- the military or naval forces of the United States 
under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any 
particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has 
the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of 
the military or naval forces of the United States, shall by act 
or joint resolution so provide. 

424 



AMERICAN RESERVATIONS TO THE TREATY 425 

3. No mandate shall be accepted by the United States under 
Article XXII. , Part L, or any other provision of the treaty of 
peace with Germany, except by action of the Congress of the 
United States. 

4. The United States reserves to itself exclusively the right 
to decide what questions are within its domestic jurisdiction and 
declares that all domestic and political questions relating wholly 
or in part to its internal affairs, including immigration, labor, 
coastwise traffic, the tariff, commerce, the suppression of traffic 
in women and children, and in opium and other dangerous drugs, 
and all other domestic questions, are solely within the jurisdic- 
tion of the United States and are not under this treaty to be 
submitted in any way either to arbitration or to the considera- 
tion of the Council or of the Assembly of the League of Nations, 
or any agency thereof, or to the decision or recommendation of 
any other power. 

5. The United States will not submit to arbitration or to 
inquiry by the Assembly or by the Council of the League of 
Nations, provided for in said treaty of peace, any questions which 
in the judgment of the United States depend upon or relate 
to its long-established policy, commonly known as the Monroe 
Doctrine ; said doctrine is to be interpreted by the United 
States alone and is hereby declared to be wholly outside the juris- 
diction of said League of Nations and entirely unaffected by 
any provision contained in the said treaty of peace with Ger- 
many. 

6. The United States withholds its assent to Articles CLVI., 
CLVIL, and CLVIII., and reserves full liberty of action with 
respect to any controversy which may arise under said articles 
between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. 

7. The Congress of the United States will provide by law 
for the appointment of the representatives of the United States 
in the Assembly and the Council of the League of Nations, and 
may in its discretion provide for the participation of the United 
States in any commission, committee, tribunal, court, council, 
or conference, or in the selection of any members thereof and for 
the appointment of members of said commissions, committees, 
tribunals, courts, councils, or conferences, or any other repre- 
sentatives under the treaty of peace, or in carrying out its pro- 
visions, and until such participation and appointment have been 
so provided for and the powers and duties of such representa- 
tives have been denned by law, no person shall represent the 
United States under either said League of Nations or the treaty 



426 APPENDIX II 

of peace with Germany or be authorized to perform any act for 
or on behalf of the United States thereunder, and no citizen of 
the United States shall be selected or appointed as a member 
of said commissions, committees, tribunals, courts, councils, or 
conferences except with the approval of the Senate of the United 
States. 

8. The United States understands that the Reparations Com- 
mission will regulate or interfere with exports from the United 
States to Germany, or from Germany to the United States, only 
when the United States by act or joint resolution of Congress 
approves such regulation or interference. 

9. The United States shall not be obligated to contribute 
to any expenses of the League of Nations, or of the secretariat, 
or of any commission, or committee, or conference, or other 
agency, organized under the League of Nations or under the 
treaty or for the purpose of carrying out the treaty provisions, 
unless and until an appropriation of funds available for such ex- 
penses shall have been made by the Congress of the United States. 

10. If the United States shall at any time adopt any plan for 
the limitation of armaments proposed by the Council of the 
League of Nations under the provisions of Article VIII. , it 
reserves the right to increase such armaments without the con- 
sent of the council whenever the United States is threatened 
with invasion or engaged in war. 

n. The United States reserves the right to permit, in its 
discretion, the nationals of a covenant-breaking State, as defined 
in Article XVI. of the covenant of the League of Nations, residing 
within the United States or in countries other than that violat- 
ing said Article XVI., to continue their commercial, financial, 
and personal relations with the nationals of the United States. 

12. Nothing in Articles CCXCVL, CCXCVIL, or in any of 
the annexes thereto or in any other article, section, or annex 
of the treaty of peace with Germany shall, as against citizens of 
the United States, be taken to mean any confirmation, ratifica- 
tion, or approval cf any act otherwise illegal or in contravention 
of the rights of citizens of the United States. 

13. The United States withholds its assent to Part XIII. 
(Articles CCCLXXXVII. to CCCCXXVII. inclusive) unless 
Congress by act or joint resolution shall hereafter make provision 
for representation in the organization established by said Part 
XIII. and in such event the participation of the United States 
will be governed and conditioned by the provisions of such act 
or joint resolution. 



AMERICAN RESERVATIONS TO THE TREATY 427 

14. The United States assumes no obligation to be bound 
by any election, decision, report, or finding of the Council or 
Assembly in which any member of the League and its self-govern- 
ing dominions, colonies, or parts of empire, in the aggregate 
have cast more than one vote, and assumes no obligation to be 
bound by any decision, report, or finding of the Council or As- 
sembly arising out of any dispute between the United States 
and any member of the League if such member, or any self-gov- 
erning dominion, colony, empire, or part united with it politically 
has voted. 



APPENDIX III 

AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE 

(Signed at Versailles, June 28, 1919, but not ratified by the United States 

Senate.) 

Whereas the United States of America and the French Repub- 
lic are equally animated by the desire to maintain the peace of the 
world so happily restored by the treaty of peace signed at Ver- 
sailles the 28th day of June, 1919, putting an end to the war 
begun by the aggression of the German Empire and ended by 
the defeat of that power ; and. 

Whereas the United States of America and the French Republic 
are fully persuaded that an unprovoked movement of aggression 
by Germany against France would not only violate both the 
letter and the spirit of the Treaty of Versailles to which the 
United States of America and the French Republic are parties, 
thus exposing France anew to the intolerable burdens of an un- 
provoked war, but that such aggression on the part of Germany 
would be and is so regarded by the Treaty of Versailles as a hos- 
tile act against all the powers signatory to that treaty and as 
calculated to disturb the peace of the world by involving inevi- 
tably and directly the states of Europe and indirectly, as expe- 
rience has amply and unfortunately demonstrated, the world 
at large ; and, 

Whereas the United States of America and the French Repub- 
lic fear that the stipulations relating to the left bank of the Rhine 
contained in said Treaty of Versailles may not at first provide 
adequate security and protection to France on the one hand and 
the United States of America as one of the signatories of the 
Treaty of Versailles on the other ; 

Therefore, the United States of America and the French Re- 
public having decided to conclude a treaty to effect these neces- 
sary purposes, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 
of America, and Robert Lansing, Secretary of State of the United 
States, specially authorized thereto by the President of the 
United States, and Georges Clemenceau, President of the Council, 
Minister of War, and Stephen Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 

428 



AGREEEMENT BETWEEN THE U. S. AND FRANCE 429 

specially authorized thereto by Raymond Poincare, President 
of the French Republic, have agreed upon the following articles : 
Article I. — In case the following stipulations relating to 
the left bank of the Rhine contained in the treaty of peace with 
Germany signed at Versailles the 28th day of June, 1919, by the 
United States of America, the French Republic and the British 
Empire among other powers : 

"Article 42. Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct 
any fortifications either on the left bank of the Rhine or on 
the right bank to the west of a line drawn 50 kilometres to 
the east of the Rhine. 

"Article 43. In the area defined above the maintenance 
and assembly of armed forces, either permanently or tempo- 
rarily, and military manoeuvres of any kind, as well as the 
upkeep of all permanent works for mobilization are in the same 
way forbidden. 

"Article 44. In case Germany violates in any manner 
whatever the provisions of Articles 42 and 43, she shall be 
regarded as committing a hostile act against the powers sig- 
natory of the present treaty and as calculated to disturb the 
peace of the world." 
may not at first provide adequate security and protection to 
France, the United States of America shall be bound to come 
immediately to her assistance in the event of any unprovoked 
movement of aggression against her being made by Germany. 

Article II. — The present treaty, in similar terms with the 
treaty of even date for the same purpose concluded between Great 
Britain and the French Republic, a copy of which treaty is an- 
nexed hereto, will only come into force when the latter is ratified. 
Article III. — The present treaty must be submitted to the 
Council of the League of Nations, and must be recognized by the 
Council, acting if need be by a majority, as an engagement 
which is consistent with the Covenant of the League. It will 
continue in force until on the application of one of the parties 
to it the Council, acting if need be by a majority, agrees that the 
League itself affords sufficient protection. 

Article IV. — The present treaty will be submitted to the 
Senate of the United States at the same time as the Treaty of 
Versailles is submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent 
to ratification. It will be submitted before ratification to the 
French Chambers for approval. The ratification thereof will 
be exchanged on the deposit of ratifications of the Treaty of 
Versailles at Paris or as soon thereafter as shall be possible. 



430 APPENDIX III 

In faith whereof the respective plenipotentiaries, to wit : On 
the part of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, 
President, and Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, of the United 
States ; and on the part of the French Republic, Georges Cle- 
menceau, President of the Council of Ministers, Minister of War 
and Stephen Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, have signed the 
above articles both in the English and French languages, and 
they have hereunto affixed their seals. 

Done in duplicate at the City of Versailles, on the twenty- 
eighth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine 
hundred and nineteen, and the one hundred and forty-third of 
the Independence of the United States of America. 

[Seal] Woodrow Wilson. 

[Seal] Robert Lansing. 

[Seal] G. Clemenceau. 

[Seal] S. Pichon. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. General Historical Background 

Manuals : C. J. H. Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, 
2 vols. (1916) ; L. H. Holt and A. W. Chilton, The History of Europe 
from 1862 to igi4 (1917); J. S. Schapiro, Modern and Contemporary 
History (1918) ; C. D. Hazen, Fifty Years of Europe (1919) ; E. B. 
Krehbiel, Nationalism, War and Society (19 16). 

Diplomatic Histories: F. M. Anderson and A. S. Hershey (editors), 
Handbook for the Diplomatic History of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1870- 
IQ14 (1918) ; Charles Seymour, The Diplomatic Background of the War 
(1916) ; W. S. Davis, The Roots of the War (1918) ; Arthur Bullard, 
The Diplomacy of the Great War (1916), a survey of international politics 
from 1878 to 1914 ; W. M. Fullcrton, Problems of Power, 2d ed. (1915) ; 
H. A. Gibbons, The New Map of Europe, ign-1914 (1914), The New 
Map of Africa, iqoo-iqi6, a History of European Colonial Expansion 
and Colonial Diplomacy (1916), and The New Map of Asia, igoo-igig 
(1919) ; A. C. Coolidge, The Origins of the Triple Alliance (191 7); 

E. J. Dillon, From the Triple to the Quadruple Alliance, Why Italy went 
into the War (1915) ; B. E. Schmitt, England and Germany (1916) ; 
Andre Tardieu, France and the Alliances, the Struggle for the Balance of 
Power (1908); E. D. Morel, Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy (191 5); 
Gilbert Murray, The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey igo6-igi$ 
(1915) ; Ernst (Graf) zu Reventlow, Dculsehlands Auswdrtige Politik 
1888-igij (1914). 

Germany : W. H. Dawson, The German Empire (i867-igi4) and the Unity 
Movement, 2 vols. (1919) ; R- H. Fife, Jr., The German Empire between 
Two Wars, a Study of the Political and Social Development of the Nation 
between 1871 and igi4 (1916) ; J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany, its 
Rise, Growth, Downfall, and Future (1919) ; C. D. Hazen, Alsace-Lor- 
raine under German Rule (1917) ; P. E. Lewin, The Germans and Africa 
(1915), and The German Road to the East, an account of the "Drang 
nach Osten" and of Teutonic Aims in the Near and Middle East (1917) ; 

F. A. J. von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, Eng. trans, by 
A. H. Powles (1913)- 

II. General Works on the War 

Documents : A vast amount of material has been published by the Govern- 
ments of the several belligerents, both diplomatic and military ; many 
documents of signal importance have been published in convenient 
form by the American Association for International Conciliation (New- 
York), by the World Peace Foundation (Boston), by The Nation (New 
York), and by The New Europe, a valuable weekly review of foreign 
politics (191 7-1920); Current History, a monthly magazine issued 

43i 



432 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

since 191 4 by The New York Times, is a store-house of documents, 
special articles, and illustrations; The Times Documentary History of 
the War, published by the London Times, is similarly useful. 
Secondary Works : John Buchan, Nelson's History of the War, 24 vols. 
(1915-1919) ; F. H. Simonds, History of the World War; Hilaire Belloc, 
Elements of the Great War ; Arthur Conan Doyle, A History of the Great 
War; Mr. Punch's History of the War (1919) ; Louis Raemaeker, Rae- 
maeker's Cartoon History of the War; F. W. T. Lange and W. T. Berry, 
Books on the Great War, an annotated bibliography. 

III. Diplomacy and Apologetics of the War 

Diplomacy: J. B. Scott (editor), Diplomatic Documents relating to the Out- 
break of the European War, 2 vols. (1916) ; E. R. O. von Mach, Official 
Diplomatic Documents relating to the Outbreak of the European War, 
with photographic reproductions of the official editions of the documents 
published by the Governments of Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, 
Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and Serbia (1916) ; F. Seymour Cocks, 
The Secret Treaties; O. P. Chitwood, The Immediate Causes of the Great 
War (191 7) ; J. W. Headlam, The History of Twelve Days, July 24th 
to August 4th, IQ14 (191 5) ; J- W. Headlam, The German Chancellor 
and the Outbreak of War (191 7) ; E. C. Stowell, The Diplomacy of the 
War of 1914 (1915) ; Munroe Smith, Militarism and Statecraft (1918). 

Apologetics : E. R. Bevan, Method in the Madness, a fresh considered 
of the case between Germany and Ourselves (19 17); Yves Guyot, 1- l 
Causes and Consequences of the War, Eng. trans, by F. A. Holt (1911 
G. Lowes Dickinson, The European Anarchy (1916) ; J. M. Bet':-: 
The Evidence in the Case (1914) ; E. J. Dillon, A Scrap of Paper (191. 
I Accuse, by a German, Eng. trans, by Alexander Gray (1915) ; Modi 
Germany in relation to the Great War, by various German writers, i 
tably Professors Meinecke, Oncken, Schumacher, and Erich Marc 
trans, by W. W. Whitelock (1916) ; H. T. W. Frobenius, The Germ 
Empire's Hour of Destiny (1914) ; E. R. O. von Mach, What Gcrma < 
Wants (1914) and Germany's Point of View (191 5) ; Paul Rohrba 
Germany's Isolation, an Exposition of the Economic Causes of the W 
Eng. trans, by P. H. Phillipson (191 5) ; Friedrich Naumann, Cent 
Europe, Eng. trans, by Christabel M. Meredith (191 7) ; Ernst (Gr;;!"' 
zu Reventlow, The Vampire of the Continent, Eng. trans, by G. | 
Hill (1916) ; G. M. C. Brandes, The World at War, Eng. trans, by 
Catherine D. Groth (1917). 

Criticism and Comment : J. W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany (1917), 
and Face to Face with Kaiserism (1918) ; D. J. Hill, Impressions of the 
Kaiser (1918) ; M. F. Egan, Ten Years near the German Frontier (1919) ; 
Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918) ; Henry 
van Dyke, Fighting for Peace (191 7) ; Emile Priim, Pan-Germanism 
versus Christendom, the Conversion of a Neutral (1917) ; T. Tittoni, 
Who is Responsible for the War, the Verdict of History (191 7) ; Count 
Julius Andrassy, Whose Sin is the World War (1915) ; Christian Gauss, 
The German Emperor as Shown in his Public Utterances (1915) ; S. 
Grumbach, Germany's Annexationist Aims, Eng. trans, by J. E. Barker 
(1917) ; J. P. Bang, Hurrah and Hallelujah, the Teaching of Germany's 
Poets, Prophets, Professors and Preachers, Eng. trans, by Jessie Brochner 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 

(1917) ; William Archer, Gems (?) of German Thought (1917) ; Edwyn 
Bevan, German Social Democracy during the War (1919) ; H. N. Brails- 
ford, Across the Blockade (1919) ; T. L. Stoddard, Present Day Europe, 
its National States of Mind (19 17). 



IV. Special Works on Particular Countries 

Belgium: Brand Whitlock, Belgium, a Personal Narrative, 2 vols. (1919); 
Hugh Gibson, A Journal from our Legation in Belgium (191 7); Car- 
dinal Mercier, Pastorals, Letters, Allocutions igi4~igiy, with a bio- 
graphical sketch by Rev. J. F. Stillemans (191 7) ; Leon van der Essen, 
The Invasion and the War in Belgium, with a Sketch of the Diplomatic 
Negotiations preceding the Conflict (191 7); C. P. Sanger and H. T. J. 
Norton, England's Guarantee to Belgium and Luxemburg, with the full 
text of the treaties (19 15); Reports on the Violations of the Rights of 
Nations and of the Laws and Customs of War in Belgium, by a Com- 
mission appointed by the Belgian Government, 2 vols. (191 7); Charles 
De Visscher, Belgium's Case, a Juridical Enquiry, Eng. trans, by E. 
F. Jourdain (1916) ; K. A. Fuehr, The Neutrality of Belgium, a Study 
of the Belgian Case wider its aspects in Political History and International 
Law (1915), the German case; Erich Erichsen, Forced to Fight, the 
Tale of a Schleswig Dane (191 7) ; A. J. Toynbee, The German Terror in 
Belgium, an Historical Record (191 7); Charles Sarolea, How Belgium 
Saved Europe (1915) ; Emile Waxweiler, Belgium, Neutral and Loyal, 
the War of IQ14 (1915). 

Austria-Hungary: H. W. Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy (1913) ; R. W. 
Seton- Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary (1908), The South Slav 
Question and the Hapsburg Monarchy (191 1), Corruption and Reform in 
Hungary (191 1), German, Slav, and Magyar, a Study in the Origins of 
the Great War (1916) ; E. Ludwig, Austria-Hungary and the War (1916). 

The Near East : N. E. and C. R. Buxton, The War and the Balkans (191 5) ; 
L. H. Courtney, 1st Baron Courtney, Nationalism and War in the Near 
East (1916) ; J. A. R. Marriott, The Eastern Question, an Historical 
Study in European Diplomacy (191 7) ; Marion I. Newbigin, Geographical 
Aspects of Balkan Problems in relation to the Great European War (1915) ; 
Fortier Jones, With Serbia into Exile, an American's Adventures with 
the Army that Can Not Die (1916) ; V. R. Savic, Southeastern Europe 
(19 1 8) ; Greece in her True Light, her position in the world-wide war as 
expounded by El. K. Venizelos, her greatest statesman, in a series of official 
documents, trans, by S. A. Xanthaky and N. G. Sakellarios (1916) ; His- 
toricus (pseud.) , Bulgaria and her Neighbors (191 7) ; G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, 
1st Baron Eversley, The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay (191 7) ; 
Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918) ; Andre 
Cheradame, The Pan-German Plot Unmasked (191 7) ; C. Snouck, 
The Revolt in Arabia (19 17). 

Armenia: Viscount Bryce, Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 
IQ15-IQ16, Documents presented to Viscount Grey (191 7) ; H. A. Gibbons, 
The Blackest Page of Modern History (19 16) ; A. J. Toynbee, The Ar- 
menian Atrocities, the Murder of a Nation (1916) ; Abraham Yohannan, 
The Death of a Nation, or the Ever Persecuted Nestorians or Assyrian 
Christians (19 16). 



434 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Zionism: Paul Goodman and A. D. Lewis (editors), Zionism, Problems and 
Views (191 7). 

East-Central Europe : I. D. Levine, The Resurrected Nations, a Popular 
History (1919) ; Ralph Butler, The New Eastern Europe (1919) ; Ste- 
phan Rudnicki, The Ukraine (1915) ; C. Rivas, La Lithuanie sons la 
joug allemande (1918) ; H. A. Gibbons, The Reconstruction of Poland and 
the Near East, Problems of Peace (1917) ; E. H. Lewinski-Corwin, A Po- 
litical History of Poland (191 7) ; F. E. Whitton, A History of Poland 
(1918). 

Russia: H. W. Williams, Russia of the Russians (1914) ; Gregor Alexinsky, 
Modem Russia (1914), Russia and the Great War (1915), and Russia 
and Europe (191 7) ; Leo Wiener, An Interpretation of the Russian People 
(191 5); R. W. Child, Potential Russia (1916) ; I. F. Marcosson, The 
Rebirth of Russia (1917) ; I. L>. Levine, The Russian Revolution (1917) ; 
Gen. Basil Gourko, War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-191/ (1919) ; 
A. F. Kerensky, The Prelude to Bolshevism (1919) ; A. S. Rappoport, 
Pioneers of the Russian Revolution (1919) ; John Reed, Ten Days that 
Shook the World (1919) ; Emile Vandervelde, Three Aspects of the 
Russian Revolution (1919) ; John Spargo, Bolshevism versus Democracy 
(1919) ; Arthur Ransome, Russia in 1919; A. R. Williams, Arthur 
Ransome, and Col. Raymond Robins, Lenin, the Man and his Work 
(1919) ; J. V. BubnofT, The Cooperative Movement in Russia, its history, 
significance, and character (1917). 

The Far East : K. S. Latourette, The Development of China (191 7) ; S. K. 
Hornbeck, Contemporary Politics in the Far East (19 16) ; Jefferson 
Jones, The Fall of Tsingtau, a Study of Japan's Ambitions in China 
(191 5) ; G. H. Blakeslee (editor), Japan and Japanese-American Rela- 
tions (191 2); T. F. F. Millard, Our Eastern Question, America's Con- 
tact with the Orient and the Trend of Relations with China and Japan 
(1916), and Democracy and the Eastern Question (1919) ; Naoichi 
Masaoka (editor), Japan to America, a symposium of papers by political 
leaders and representative citizens of Japan and on the relations between 
Japan and the United States (1915) ; B. L. Putnam Weale, The Fight 
for the Republic in China (191 7), and The Truth about China and Japan 
(1919). 

V. Great Britain and the War 

Britain and the Empire : David Lloyd George, Through Terror to Triumph, 
speeches and pronouncements , arranged by F. L. Stevenson(i9i5) ; W. S. 
M. Knight, A History of Great Britain during the Great War (1916) ; 
Andre Chevrillon, England and the War 1914-1915, with a preface by 
Rudyard Kipling (191 7) ; J. C. Smuts, War-Time Speeches, a compila- 
tion of public utterances in Great Britain (1917) ; G. L. Beer, The English- 
speaking Peoples, their Future Relations and Joint International Obli- 
gations (191 7) ; Sinclair Kennedy, The Pan-Angles, a Consideration of 
the Federation of the Seven English-speaking Nations (1914). 

Ireland: W. B. Wells and N. Marlow, The History of the Irish Rebellion 
of 1916 (191 7) ; F. P. Jones, History of the Sinn Fein Movement and the 
Irish Rebellion of 1916 (1917) ; G. W. Russell (pseud., A. E.), National 
Being, Some Thoughts on an Irish Policy (iqi6) ; L. R. Morris, The 
Celtic Dawn, a Survey of the Renascence in Ireland 1 889-1916 (191 7) ; 
Shane Leslie, The Celt and the World, a Study of the Relation of Celt 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 435 

and Teuton in History (191 7) ; Francis Hackett, Ireland, a Study in 
Nationalism (1918) ; E. R. Turner, Ireland and England (19 19) ; Lord 
Ernest William Hamilton, The Soul of Ulster (191 7). 

VI. The United States and the War 

General Narrative: J. B. McMaster, The United States in the World 
War, 2 vols. (1918-1919) ; J. S. Bassett, Our War with Germany, a 
History (1919) ; Florence F. Kelly, What America Did (1919) ; Colonel 
De Chambrun and Captain De Marenches, The American Army in the 
European Conflict (1919) ; L. P. Ay res, The War with Germany, a 
statistical summary, 2d ed. (1920). 

President Wilson: j. B. Scott (editor), President Wilson's Foreign Policy, 
messages, addresses, papers (191 8) ; William Archer, The Peace Presi- 
dent, a brief appreciation of Woodrow Wilson (1919) ; Daniel Halevy, 
President Wilson (19 19). 

Miscellaneous: W. F. Willoughby, Government Organization in War 
Time and After, a Survey of the Federal Civil Agencies created for the 
Prosecution of the War (1919) ; Lt.-Col. J. C. Wise, The Turn of the 
Tide, Operations of American Troops (1919) ; Committee on Public 
Information, War Information Series; Ida C. Clarke, American Women 
and the World War (1918). 

VII. Detailed Military and Naval Operations 

Military : In addition to the General Works on the War, listed above, 
there are innumerable accounts of various campaigns. Chief among 
these are official reports of the commanding generals and narratives by 
press correspondents and reminiscences of soldiers engaged. The 
books of Philip Gibbs are probably the most important journalistic 
narratives. Special mention should be made of " 1914" ; the Memoirs 
of Field Marshal Viscount French (1914) ; Maj. Gen. Sir F. Maurice, 
The Last Four Months, How the War Was Won (1919) ; E. A. Powell, 
Italy at War (191 7) ; G. Gordon-Smith, Through the Serbian Campaign 
(1916) ; John Masefield, Gallipoli (1916) ; John Reed, The War in 
Eastern Europe (1916) ; Stanley Washburn, The Russian Campaign 
(1915) ; A. T. Clark, To Bagdad with the British (191 7) ; J. H. Morgan 
(translator), The War Book of the German General Staff, being "The 
Usages of War on Land" issued by the Great General Staff of the German 
Army (191 5); Gen. Erich von Ludendorff, Ludendorjf 's Own Story, 
August, 1914, to November, 1918, 2 vols. (1920) ; Raymond Recouly, 
A Life of Marshal Foch (1919) ; H. A. Atteridge, Marshal Ferdinand 
Foch (1919) ; S. Lauzanne, Fighting France (1918) ; Mario Alberti, 
Italy's Great War (1918) ; Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Despatches, 
December, 191$- April, 1919 (1920). 

Naval : Admiral Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa, The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916 
(1919) ; A. S. Hurd and H. H. Bashford, The Heroic Record of the British 
Navy, a Short History of the Naval War, 1914-1918 (1919) ; Grand Ad- 
miral von Tirpitz, My Memoirs, 2 vols. (1919). 

Miscellaneous : C. R. Gibson, War Inventions and Hoxv They Were In- 
vented (1917) ; I. F. Marcosson, The Business of War (1918) ; P. Azan, 
The Warfare of To-day (191 8) ; W. J. Abbot, Aircraft and Submarines 



436 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(1918) ; E. Middleton, Aircraft of To-day and of the Future (1918) ; 
H. P. Davison, The American Red Cross in the Great War (1919) ; Evan- 
geline C. Booth and Grace L. Lutz, The War Romance of the Salvation 
Army (1919) ; W. L. Mallaber, Medical History of the Great War (1916) ; 
Romain Rolland, Above the Battle (1916) ; H. G. Wells, Mr. Britling 
Sees it Through (1916) ; Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (191 7); Bruce 
Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (191 7). 

VIII. The League of Nations and the Peace 

Peace Proposals : R. S. Bourne (editor), Towards an Enduring Peace, 
a Symposium of Peace Proposals and Programs, IQ14-IQ16 (1916) ; 
Documents and Statements relating to Peace Proposals and War Aims, 
December, 1916, to November, 191S (1919). 

The League of Nations: S. P. Dugg.^n (editor), The League of Nations, 
the Principle and the Practice (1919) ; Mathias Erzberger, The League 
of Nations, the Way to the World's Peace, Eng. trans, by Bernard Miall 
(1919) ; D. S. Morrow, The Society of Free States (1919) ; T. J. Law- 
rence, The Society of Nations (1919) ; D. J. Hill, The Rebuilding of 
Europe (191 7) ; J. A. Hobson, Towards International Government 
(191 5) ; J. S. Bassett, The Lost Fruits of Waterloo (1918) ; F. B. Sayre, 
Experiments in International Administration (1919). 

The Peace Congress: Walter Lippmann, The Political Scene (1919) ; 
H. M. Hyndman, Clemenceau, the Man and his Time (1919) ; J. M. 
Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920) ; E. J. Dillon, 
The Inside Story of the Peace Conference (1920). 

Politics and Economics : F. A. Ogg and C. A. Beard, National Govern- 
ments and the World War (1919) ; J. L. Laughlin, Credit of the Nations 
(1918) ; E. J. Clapp, Economic Aspects of the War (1915) ; F. W. Hirst, 
The Political Economy of War (191 5) ; A. D. Noyes, Financial Chapters 
on the War (1916) ; H. L. Gray, War-Time Control of Industry (1918) ; 
E. L. Bogart, Direct and Indirect Costs of the Great World War (1918) ; 
D. C. McMurtrie, The Disabled Soldier (1919) ; P. W. Kellogg and A. 
H. Gleason, British Labor and the War (1919) ; F. A. Cleveland and 
Joseph Schafer (editors), Democracy in Reconstruction (1920) ; E. M. 
Friedman (editor), American Problems of Reconstruction (1919) ; Ber- 
trand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, — Socialism, Anarchism, 
and Syndicalism (1919). 



INDEX 



Abbas II., 72 

Abruzzi, Duke of the, g5 

Acre, captured, 347 

Action Liberate, in France, post-war, 407 

Acts, war measure enacted by Congress, 

222 
Adalia, Italian mandatary, 384; Italy's 

hold on, 400 
Adrianople, and Bulgaria, 84, 87 
Adriatic islands, 385-386 
JEgean Sea, coasts and islands, 87, 91, 366, 

38s 

Africa, German colonies, 67-69 ; colonies, 
Libya, 92; and Gt. Brit., 399; manda- 
taries, 401, 421 

Africa, German East, cession to Gt. Brit., 

375 

Africa, German Southwest, cession to 
British Union of South Africa, 375 

Africa, South, loyalty, 66 ; army, losses, 
3QO 

Agadir, 12 

Agram, riots, 349; Pan-Slavic Congress, 
350; Jugoslav Convention, 354 

Agriculture, Germany, 9; France, 393 
(See also Land) 

Ailette River, 277 

Air raid victims, 390 

Airplanes, 24, 180; German raids, 74; 
lack of, 115; Allied, 118, 177; hydro- 
planes, 221; Aviation act, 222; Ger- 
man, 324; military and naval aviation 
to be abandoned by Germany, 376; 
development of, 408-409 

Aisne, 33; Battle of the, 34, 2g2, 313-316; 
2d Battle of the, 275-278; offensive, 
281 ; Drive, 314-316 

Albania, cession to Italy, 72, 87, gi, 93, 
386; cession to Greece, 87, 366, 385; 
conquest of, 135-137; Italian protecto- 
rate, 253, 385 ; nationalism, 397 ; Italy's 
hold on, 400 

Albert, Duke of Wiirttemberg, 27-29, 31, 
36, 185 

Albert, King of Belgium, 329, 332, 358 

Albert (Town) captured, 307 

Alcoholic beverages, prohibition of, 405 

Aleppo, 284; captured, 347; under the 
Arabs of Hedjaz, 384 

Alexander, Prince, of Greece, 285, 354 



Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina, 225-226 

Alexeiev, General, 51, in, 229, 242, 337 

Algeria, 71 

All-Russian, Union of Zemstvos, 194; 
Extraordinary Commission, 249; gov- 
ernment, 341 

Allenby, Edmund, 286-287, 344, 346-347 

Allenstein, 42 

Alliances, Austria and Germany, 6, 317; 
France and Russia, 6 ; England and Japan, 
63; Russia and Gt. Brit., 69; Entente 
and Italy, 72-73; Triple Alliance, go; 
France, U. S., and Gt. Brit., 370; Japan 
and the Entente, 370. (See also En- 
tangling alliances, Entente.) 

Allied armies, battle-line, 35-37, 114, 176- 
177, 1S3, 305-306, 326, 328-32g; 332, 
345 ; losses, 8g, 388-390 ; lacking am- 
munition, artillery and airplanes, 115 ; 
nadir of defeat, 1 21-124; munitions, 
168; cooperation, 277; plans, 278-321- 
322; armed intervention in Russia, 338- 
342 ; Army of the East, 344 ; occupation 
of the Rhine and bridgeheads, 357, 377; 
education, among troops at the front, 
410 

Allied Conference, Paris, 272; Supreme 
Council, raises economic blockade against 
Bolsheviki, 388 

Allies, optimism, 80-83 ; attempt to domi- 
nate the Near East, 8o-g8 ; naval suprem- 
acy, domestic disturbances, diplomacy, 
etc., 81-83 ; attack on the Dardanelles, 
83-8g; fail to relieve Russia, 11 2-1 20; 
decline of prestige, 1 21-124; counting 
on Greek aid, 129; fail to relieve Serbia, 
129-134; troops in Salonica, 130; fail 
to obtain a decision in 1016, 168-200; 
coordination of plans, 168-170; Drives, 
Somme, Isonzo, Sereth, 171-181; and 
the German Peace, 108-200; coopera- 
tion, 202-203 ; reply to President Wil- 
son's note on war-aims, 209-210; and 
the Russian Revolution, 236-237; war- 
aims, 253, 272, 297-298; pave the way for 
ultimate -victory, 261-298; plans and 
prospects for 1917, 261-272; resume of 
membership, 270-271; Supreme War 
Council, 271-272; lesson of the Hinden- 
burg Line, 272-281 ; recovery of prestige 



437 



438 



INDEX 



in the Near East, 281-287; pessimism, 
287 ; seeming obstacles to yictory, 287- 
298; triumph, and Central Europe 
revolts, 326-364; victories in the West, 
326-334; intervention in Russia, 334- 
342 ; triumph in the Near East, and sur- 
render of Bulgaria and Turkey, 342- 
348 ; treaty with Austria, 386-387. 
(See also headings under Inter-Allied.) 

Alsace-Lorraine, 34, 148-149, 254, 397; 
invasion of, 28-29 ; and Austria, 266 ; 
plebiscite, 290; and Pope Benedict, 
291; to be righted, 298; autonomy, 
33 1 ; joyous greetings to the Allies, 358; 
cession to France, 366, 374 

American Expeditionary Force, 2ig, 261, 
329. (See also U. S. army.) 

American railroad engineers, and the Trans- 
Siberian railway, 340-341 

American Red Cross, report on food, 393 

Americans killed at sea, 390 

Amerongen, refuge of William II, 361-362 

Amiens, 35 ; attacked, 306 

Ammonite, in explosive mines, 278 

Ammunition. (See Munitions) 

Anarchic state system in Germany, 398 

Anarchy, in commerce, 1-7 ; international, 
1-7, 17, 201-203, 211, 224, 270, 365, 377- 

379, 411; in Russia, 231 
Anatolia, German influence, 71 
Anatolian railway, 69 

Ancre valley, 273 

Andrassy, Julius, 265, 352 

Anglo-American sea patrol, and the sub- 
marines, 322 

Anglo-French War Council, 169 

Anglophobia, U. S., 204 

Annexations, 289 

Annunzio, Gabriele d', 385 

Antwerp, 28 ; Fall of, 35 ; raided, 74 ; 
entered by King Albert, 358 

Anzacs, 88 

Arabia, 253 

Arabs of Hedjaz. (See Hedjaz) 

Arbitration, international, 204; and a 
negotiated peace, 288 ; compulsory, 290 ; 
League of Nations, 379-380, 416-417 

Archangel, captured, 340 

Ardennes, destruction of, 38 ; Forest of, 29 

Argentina, and Germany, 271 

Argonne, 32-33, 117 

Arizona, offered as bribe to Mexico, 216 

Armament, limitation of, 211, 290, 20S, 

380, 415 ; disarmament, Bolshevist policy, 
254; disarmament, Germany, 398 

Armed force, German, 405 
Armed neutrality. (See Neutrality, 
armed) 



Armenia, 136-137; in Russian hands, 

139-140; self-determination, 251; auton- 
omy, 254 ; and Mittel-Europa, 335 ; 

frontiers, 371; a free republic, 384; 

food supply, 393 ; nationalism, 397 
Armenia, Old, captured, 282 
Armenians, massacred or starved, 139, 390 
Armentieres, captured, 308 
Armistice, of Nov. n, 1918, 340, 357; for 

Bulgaria, 345; for Turkey, 347-348; 

for Austria-Hungary, 353 
Arms. (See Munitions) 
Armies. (See Allied armies, Austrian army, 

French army, etc.) 
Army, of the East, 344 ; life, educational 

value of, 409; surgery, development of, 

409 
Arnim, Gen. Sixt von, 303, 307-308 
Arras, 35-36; Battle of, 275; offensive, 280 
Arsiero, 157; captured, 174 
Art, works, to be returned by Germany, 

377 
Artillery, British and French, 178; Battle 

of Flanders, 278-280; German, 304; 

development of, 408. (See also Guns ; 

Machine guns) 
Artois, Allied attack, 118 
Asia Minor, 136; and Greece, 73; and 

Italy, 87 ; coasts of, Greek mandatary, 

384 

Asiago, captured, 157, 174; Plateau, 296 

Asiatic Turkey, 136 

Asolone, Monte, captured, 296 

Asquith, Premier, 19, 78, 83, 159, 193, 197 

Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdi- 
nand, 13-14,374 

Assembly of Czechs and Jugoslavs at Prague, 

350-351 

Atrocities (German), at Sommeilles, 38; 
f rightfulness, etc., 74; chlorine gas, 117; 
deplored by Pope Benedict, 197-198; 
devastation, 274; deportation of Bel- 
gians and French, 144-145 

Atrocities (Turkish), Armenian massacres, 
139; in the Caucasus, 335 

Auberive, captured, 321 

Auffenburg, General von, 44-45 

Australasian troops, at Gallipoli, 122 

Australia, loyalty, 66, 68; territorial de- 
mands, 371 ; army, losses, 390 

Austria, alliance with Germany (1879), 6; 
Reichsrat, 264-265 ; proclaimed a re- 
public, 356; treaty with the Allies, Sept. 
10, 1919, 383, 386-387 ; public debt, 
391-392 ; nationalism, 397 

Austria-Hungary, Dual Monarchy, 14- 
20; and Galicia, 43, and Serbia, 55-57; 
and Italy, 57; treaty with Bulgaria, 84; 



INDEX 



439 



Triple Alliance, go; and the Irredenta, 
91 ; recovers Galicia, 99-102 ; peace with 
Finland, 259; internal disturbances, 
263, 300, 317, 319; and Alsace-Lor- 
raine, 266 ; autonomy of peoples, 298 ; 
alliance with Germany, 317; collapses, 
348-356; evacuation of conquered terri- 
tories, 353 ; navy, surrender, 353 ; dis- 
rupted, 396-397 

Austro-German trade to Odessa, 259 

Austro-Hungarian army, organization, 23- 
24 ; defeated, 45-46 ; counter-offensive, 
47; losses, 56-57, 174, 176, 319, 352, 389; 
fraternization with Italian troops, 294; 
battle-line, 318; plans, 318; mutinies, 
349; demobilization, 353 

Autocracy, 404; in Russia, 225-233, 237- 
238, 262, 270 

Automobiles, 24 

Averescu, General, 188-189 

Aviation, act, 222; military and naval 
aviation to be abandoned by Germany, 
376. (See also Airplanes; Balloons; 
Dirigibles) 

Avksentiev, Nicholas, 341 

Avlona, 91-93, 135-136 

Avocourt Wood, captured, 277 

Aziziyeh, captured, 283 

Babuna Pass, 129; captured, 345 

Bagdad, 137; Bagdad railway, 69, 83, 136, 
139; Berlin-to-Bagdad project, 72, 142, 
282, 346-347; saved to the Turks, 142; 
captured, 283 ; Bagdad-Samara railway, 
284 

Bainsizza Plateau, captured, 294-295 

Baku, and Russia, 341 

Balance of power, 5-6, 202, 396 

Balfour, Arthur J., 193, 220, 368 

Balkan States, 12-20; war of 1912-13, 70; 
disintegration of, 72-73; League of 1912, 
73 ; and Allied diplomacy, 82 ; and the 
Entente, 84 ; domination of, 89 ; and the 
Triple Alliance, 90; trade routes to Ger- 
many, 282 ; relations to be adjusted, 298 ; 
Balkanization of Central Europe, 398 

Balloons, 221 

Baltic Sea, railroads to Bagdad, 282; Ger- 
man forts on, 377 

Baltic states, food supply, 392 

Banat of Temesvar, rival claimants for, 
3S4-3SS ; partition of, 384 

Bankers, and a negotiated peace, 288; 
secret conferences, 289 ; post-war, 406 

Bapaume, 177-179; captured, 272-273, 306, 
326 

Barleux, captured, 306 

Barrage, creeping, 323 



Basra, captured, 72 

Batocki, Herr von, 170 

Bauer, Gustav Adolf, 331, 372 

Bavaria, a republic, 360 ; civil war, 363 

Beatty, Vice-Admiral Sir David, 62, 165, 
359 

Beersheba, captured, 286 

Beirut, captured, 347 

Beisan, captured, 347 

Bela Kun, 384 

Belfort, 31, 150 

Belgian army, 25 ; offensives from Malines 
and Antwerp, 35 ; losses, 389 

Belgian commission to the U. S., 39 

Belgians, butchered, 390 

Belgium, neutrality, 19; invasion of, 24- 
30; situation, close of 1914, 37; relief 
work in, 39; deportations, 144-145; 
195; restoration, 254, 298, 331; van- 
quished, 300 ; special convention with 
Holland, 385; damage and destruction, 
394 ; electoral reforms, 404 

Belgrade, captured, 57, 127, 346; railroads 
to Berlin, 282 

Bell, Johannes, 374 

Belleau Wood, 316, 322 

Below, Gen. Fritz von, 303, 314, 316, 320 

Below, Gen. Otto von, 303-306 

Benedict XV, Pope, 197-198, 290-291, 331, 
410 

Bentinck, Count Goddard, 361 

Berchtold, Count, 47 

Berlin, and the Near East, 134, 282 ; revo- 
lution, 361-363 

Berlin-to-Bagdad project. (See Bagdad) 

Bernhardi, 396 

Bernstein, Eduard, 363 

Bernstorff, Count, 207, 215 

Berthelot, General, 329 

Beseler, Gov. -Gen. von, 196 

Bessarabia, 123, 182, 191, 259 

Bethmann-Hollweg, Chancellor von, 19, 
93, 149, 164, 166-167, 213, 266-267, 
288-289 

Beyers, Gen., 66-67 

Big Three, 370 

Bikaner, Maharajah of, 368 

Birth-rate, decline, 391 

Bismarck, 8-9, 360, 368 

Bismarck Archipelago, 67 

Bissolati, Leonida, 371 

Bitlis, captured, 140; abandoned by the 
Russians, 142 

Black Sea, and Mittel-Europa, 335, 343 

Blacklist of neutral pro-German firms, 
170 

Bliss, Tasker, 368 

Bloc, in the Reichstag, 267-269, 363, 373 



440 



INDEX 



Blockade, against German trade, 170; 
foodstuffs, 196-197; by German sub- 
marines, 214, 219; removal of economic 
barriers, 298; economic, against Ger- 
many, 357; general, 360; against the 
Bolsheviki, 360, 388 

Blucher (Cruiser), 62 

Boehm-Ermolli, General, 47, 100-101, 242, 
303, 314, 320-322 

Boers, 66-67 

Bohemia, martial law, 351; protection for 
German inhabitants of, 386 

Bojadiev, General, 127 

Bolivia, severs relations with Germany, 
218, 271, 388 

Bolo Pasha, 292-293 

Bolsheviki, 239-241, 244, 247; policy of, 
248; constitution, 250; foreign policy, 
252; peace negotiations, 252-253, 256; 
revolution, and the Entente, 269 ; chaotic 
conditions, 270; in Italy, 293; paci- 
fism, 294; and Brest-Litovsk treaty, 
334; and Mittel-Europa, 335-342; ap- 
peals against, 359 ; institutions desired 
for Germany, 363 ; and Germany, 375 ; 
and Allied peace treaties, 387-388; Fin- 
land, 392; foreign intervention, 405; 
and socialism, post-war, 406-407 

Bombardments, victims, 390 

Bonnet Rouge (Newspaper), 292 

Borden, Sir Robert, 66, 368 

Boris, Crown Prince of Bulgaria, 345-346 

Borissoff, captured, 258 

Boroevic, General, 176, 318-319 

Boselli, Paolo, 158, 293, 297 

Bosnia-Herzegovina, autonomy, 254 

Bosphorus, internationalization, 384 

Botha, Louis, 66-67, 368 

Bothmer, Count, 242 

Boulogne, occupation by the Germans, 36 

Boundary disputes, 370 

Bourgeois, Leon, 383 

Bourgeoisie, Russian, 236, 239, 241, 245, 
248-249; German, 289; American and 
Japanese, 336; post-war, 405-406 

Bourlon Wood, captured, 280 

Bouvet (Warship), 85 

Boy-Ed, 207 

Bozen, 91 

Branting, 289 

Bratiano, Premier, 368 

Brazil, severs relations with Germany, 
218, 271 

Bread lines, Russia, 227 

Bremen, revolution, 361 

Brenta River, 352 

Breshkovskaya, Madame, 245 

Breslau (Cruiser), 59-60, 70 



Brest-Litovsk treaty, 253-259, 297, 300, 
317. 334-337, 341-342. 35o, 357, 364, 375 

Brialmont. Engineer, 189 

Briand, Aristide, 83, 145, 167, 193, 198, 
292 

Bridges destroyed, 394 

British army, organization, 23, 25 ; advance 
halted, 30; losses, 30, 115, 120, 122, 133, 
146, 181, 278, 281, 307, 310, 389; con- 
scription, 148, 310-312; artillery, 178; 
battle-lines, 278, 283, 305-306; in Cologne, 
359. (See also Great Britain) 

British Expeditionary Force, size of, 39; 
in France, 62 ; in Egypt, 282 

British India. (See India) 

British navy, warships in the Battle of 
Flanders, 36; supremacy, 58-62, 65, 73, 
81-82; assistance of Japan, 62-65; and 
Turkey, 71; submarines, 75; attack on 
the Dardanelles, 83-86; losses, 165; 
sinks ships at Zeebrugge and Ostend, 310. 
(See also Great Britain) 

Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count von, 364, 372 

Brody, 101 

Bronstein. (See Trotsky, Leon) 

Bruges, captured, 35, 332 

Brussels, captured by the Germans, 28 ; by 
the Allies, 357 ; entered by King Albert, 
358 

Brussilov, General, 44, 51, 101, 172-174, 
176, 228-229, 242-243 

Buchan, John, Nelson's history of the 
War, 303 

Bucharest, 189; Treaty of, 259, 297, 300, 
317, 346, 357, 364 

Buczacz, captured, 174 

Budapest, revolution, 355; socialist revo- 
lution, 384 

Buffer states, 19, 25 

Buildings, destroyed by the Germans, 394 

Bukowina, Russian army in, 47 ; cession to 
Rumania, 123; captured, 174; evac- 
uated by Russians, 243 ; union with 
Rumania, 354 

Bulgaria, and Adrianople, 73 ; territorial 
demands, 87, 122-125; hostile to Allies, 
95-96; loans from Germany, 125; secret 
convention with Austria-Hungary, 84, 
125; treaty with Turkey, 125; enters 
the War, 124-129; and the Allies, 287; 
indifference, 300; surrenders, 342-348; 
sues for armistice, 345 ; treaty, Nov. 27, 
1918,383-384; food supply, 393 

Bulgarian army, mobilization, 125; battle- 
line, 343 ;, losses 389 

Biilow, General von, 26, 28, 30-31, 36, 38, 
01 

Bundesrat, 9 



INDEX 



441 



Bureaucracy, in Russia, 225-231, 237- 
238; in Austria, 265; in Germany, 
268, 301; among the Allies, 404; state 
socialism, 407 

Bureaus, international, and the League 
of Nations, covenant, 422 

Burian, Stcphan, Baron, 47, 91, 266, 317, 
352 

Byng, Sir Julian, 305-307, 326, 329 

Cables, submarine, surrendered by Ger- 
many, 377 

Cadorna, Luigi, 95, 97, 156-157, 169, 174, 
176, 272, 294-296 

Caillaux, Joseph, 292-293 

Calais, German designs on, 36, 307 

Calthorpe, Admiral, 347-348 

Cambon, Jules, 368 

Cambrai, captured, 35, 329; Battle of, 
280-281 

Camouflage, of ships, 221 

Camp life,- educational value of, 409 

Canada, loyalty, 66 

Canadian army, holds Ypres, 116; losses, 
3QO 

Canals, international control, 290 

Cantigny, captured, 323 

Cape-to-Cairo railway, 399 

Capellc, Vice-Admiral von, 1 64 

Capital and labor, and the Treaty of Ver- 
sailles, 378 

Capitalism, post-war, 40S 

Capitalistic imperialism, 399-401 

Capitalists, German, 10-n; eliminated in 
Germany, 362 

Caporetto, captured, 295 

Carey, Gen. Sandeman, 306 

Caroline Islands, occupied by the Jap- 
anese, 67 

Carpathian passes, 47-48, 99, 101, 1S7, 259 

Carso plateau, 176; captured, 294-295 

Carson, Sir Edward, 66, 131, 159, 311-312 

Casement, Sir Roger, 1 60-1 61 

Castelnau, General, 28, 33, 118, 169 

Catholic Centrists. (See Centrists) 

Catholic Church, and militarism, 1 1 ; ex- 
clusion from participation in diplomatic 
questions, 92 ; Pope Benedict, 197-198, 
290-291, 331, 410; peace plea, 290-291; 
and Joseph Caillaux, 292 ; German propa- 
ganda, 293 ; and conscription in Ireland, 
311-312; in Serbia, 3S6; post-War 
parties, 406 ; Social, post-War, 407 ; 
Popular Party in Italy, post-War, 407 ; 
War Council, U. S., post-War, 407; and 
the War, 410 

Cattaro, 135 

Cattle, decrease, 393 



Caucasus, Provisional government and the 
Soviets, 337 

Cavell, Edith, 120 

Censorship, press, 21; in Germany, 269, 
288; post-War, 404 

Central Committee of the Constitutional 
Democratic Party, Russia, 337 

Central Committee of the Russian Socialist 
Revolutionary Party, 337 

Centrists, Germany, n, 266-269, 33i, 
361, 363, 373; post-War, 407 

Cettinje, captured, 135 

Chalons, captured, 3s 

Champagne, Allied attack, n 8-1 19 

Chanak (Fort), 85 

Charleroi, captured, 30 

Charles, Emperor of Austria, 195, 197, 
263-266, 270, 317, 350, 353-356 

Charles I, King of Rumania, 182 

Charles V, Emperor, 396 

Charles Francis, Archduke of Austria, 
158, 185 

Chateau-Thierry, captured, 323 

Chaulnes, captured, 273 

Chauny, captured, 306 

Chauvinism, 94 

Chemical industries, development of, 409 

Chemin des Dames, 277; captured, 329 

Cherbatov, Prince, 109, in 

Child labor, and the Treaty of Versailles, 
378-379; and the League of Nations 
covenant, 422 

Children, traffic in, and the League of Na- 
tions covenant, 422 

China and Germany, n; independence of, 
63; Russo-Japanese War, 108; severs 
relations with Germany, 271; protec- 
tion of, 371 ; refuses to sign Peace Treaty, 
374; German rights renounced, 375; 
treaty not ratified, 383 ; and Japan, 
400; republic, 402 

Chlorine gas, n 5-1 17. (See also Gases, 
poisonous) 

Cholm, incorporated into Ukrainia, 349 

Christian missions, protection, 410 

Christian People's Party. (See Centrists) 

Christian Socialists, Austria, 356, 407 

Church, leadership and a negotiated peace; 
unity, post-War, 410 

Churchill, Winston, 81, 133 

Cilicia, French mandatary, 384, 400 

Ciove, Monte, 157 

City of Memphis (Ship), 216 

Cividale, captured, 295 

Civilization, defense of, 206 

Clam-Martinitz, Count, 264-265 

Class, dictatorship, Russia, 246; struggle, 
Russia, 239; hatred, post-War, 407 



442 



INDEX 



Clemenceau, Georges, 293, 297, 313, 323, 
368-370, 372 

Clericals, Belgium, post-War, 407 

Coal resources, 40; fields, Russia, 259; 
Petroseny basin, 259 ; delivered by 
Germany, 377; mines damaged, 393- 
394 

Coaling station, cession to Italy, 385 

Coblenz, mobilization of German army, 
22; occupied by Allied troops, 357; 
administered by the U. S. army, 35^; 
evacuated by Allied armies, 377 

Collective bargaining, 406 

Cologne, occupied by Allied troops, 357; 
administered by the British army, 359; 
evacuated by Allied armies, 377 

Colonies, trade, Socialist program, 290; 
adjustment of claims, 298; mandataries, 
401, 420. (See also Africa, Germany, 
colonies, etc.) 

Combles, captured, 180 

Commerce, national and international, 2-7 ; 
German, 10; trade-war, 169-170; trade 
routes, Berlin and the Near East, 134, 
282; "open door" for colonics, 290; 
removal of economic barriers, 298; con- 
trol of, League of Nations, 380, 401, 
421-422; development of devices and 
implements, 408-409 

Committee on Public Information, U. S., 
222 

Commons, House of, elections, 403 

Competition, industrial, 411 

Compiegne, captured, 31, 315 

Compulsory war-service. {See Conscription) 

Concrete redoubts, 279 

Conference, at Potsdam (1914), 14-16; 
to Revise War-Aims, at Paris, 246-247 ; 
of France, Gt. Brit., and Italy, at Ra- 
pallo, 271 ; Allied Conference at Paris, 
272; of International Socialists, 267, 
289-292; of All-Russian Factions at 
Prinkipo Island, 387. (See also Peace 
Conferences) 

Conferences, secret, bankers', 289 

Congress, U. S., war measures, 222; of 
Ruthenians, at Kiev, 238; of Oppressed 
Nationalities, at Rome, 350; Definitive 
Peace Congress, 372 

Connolly, James, 161 

Conscription, British Isles, 147-148, 310- 
311 ; in Germany, 195, 375 

Conservatives, Germany, 267-268; in Gt. 
Brit., 403 

Conspirators, pro-German, 207 

Constantine, King of Greece, 87, 95, 125, 
129-134, 136, 190-191, 284-285, 344 

Constantinople, 69-72, 83-89; and Russia, 



55, 234, 252; to Berlin, railroads, 

282; defenseless, 359; internationalized, 

384 
Constituent National Assembly, of Russia, 

228-229, 244, 248-249, 251-252, 341 ; 

of Austria, 356; of Germany, 361-363, 

374 
Constitution, of Prussia, 9; of Finland, 

230; of Ireland, 263; of the German 

Republic, 364 
"Contemptible little army," 80 
Contraband, 204 
Convoy of merchantmen, 221 
Cooperation, Allies, 168-170, 202-203, 210; 

in Germany, 195; Allied armies, 277; 

international, 365, 379; nationalists, 

398 ; bourgeoisie and socialism, post-War, 

406-407 ; in production, post-War, 407- 

408; religious, post-War, 410; social and 

international, 411 
Copper mines, 134 
Corea. (See Korea) 
Corfu, 135 ; Declaration of, 265, 354 
Corinth, Isthmus of, captured, 284 
Cosmopolitanism, 396 
Cossacks of the Don, anti-Bolshevik, 255 ; 

and the Soviets, 337 
Cost of living, 392, 406 
Costa Rica, severs relations with Ger- 
many, 271 
Cote de l'Oie, captured, 153, 277 
Cotton industry, destroyed, 394 
Council of National Defense, in U. S., 222; 

in Russia, 245 
Council of People's Commissioners, Russia, 

247, 249, 251, 257 
Council of the Empire, Russia, 225 
Council of the League of Nations, first 

meeting, 383 
Council of Three, 370; of Four, 370; of 

Five, 370-372 ; of Ten, of the Preliminary 

Peace Conference, 370 
Council of Workmen's Deputies, Russia, 

228 
Council, War, at Paris, 169 
Courland. (See Latvia) 
Court of International Justice, 417 
Courtrai, captured, 332 
Covenant of the League of Nations. (See 

League of Nations) 
Covenant of Versailles, 398 
Cracow, 45-46, 48-49, 99 ; riots, 349 
Craiova, captured, 188 
Craonne, captured, 277 
Creel, George, 222 
Crimean War, 72 
Croatia, martial law, 35 1 ; cession to Serbia, 

384 



INDEX 



443 



Croats, in Austria, 263; Jugoslav control, 

354 

Crown Prince Frederick William of Ger- 
many and Prussia. (See Frederick Wil- 
liam) 

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. (See 
Rupprecht) 

Ctesiphon, captured, 137 

Cuba, German conspirators, 207; joins 
the Allies, 218, 271 

Cumieres, captured, 154 

Currency inflation, 392 

Curzon, Earl, 103 

Cuxhaven, 59 

Cyprus, annexed by Gt. Brit., 72; cession 
to Greece, 123 

Cyrenaica, Italy's hold on, 400 

Czechoslovak, mutinies, 82, 317; army, 
389; army in Siberia, 337-34° 

Czechoslovakia, autonomy, 349; govern- 
ment recognized, 351; independence, 
35 2- 356, 383 ; territorial demands, 
366, 371; food supply, 393; nationalism, 
397; republican form of government, 
402 

Czechoslovaks, occupy Upper Silesia, 359 

Czechs, in Austria, rebellion, 263 ; indict- 
ment of the Habsburg monarchy, 264- 
265 

Czernin, Count Ottokar, 254, 256, 264- 
266, 270, 289, 317 

Czernowitz, 47 ; captured, 243 

Dalmatia, cession to Italy, 91, 385; ces- 
sion to Serbia, 386 
Damage, by the Germans. (See Destruc- 
tion) 
Damascus, under the Arabs of Hedjaz, 384 
Damloup, redoubt, 155; captured, iga 
Danish Islands, 207. (See also Denmark) 
Dankl, General, 44-46, 52 
Danube River, Allied control, 353 
Danzig, 42; an internationalized free city, 

375^38i 

Dardanelles, 70, 83-85, 92; failure of cam- 
paign, 122; close of campaign, 133; 
internationalization, 2g8, 384 

David, Eduard, 364 

Dead Man's Hill, 152-153, 277 

Debeney, General, 326, 329 

Debts, public, of belligerent nations, 391 

Declaration of Corfu, 265, 354 

Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling 
and Exploited Peoples, 250-252 

Defeatism, 199-200, 212, 288, 291-294; 
in France, 292-293; in Italy, 294, 297; 
obstacle to Allied victory, 297, 325 

Definitive Peace Congress, 372. 



Degoutte, General, 321, 323, 329 

Delcasse, Theophile, 83, 131 

Democracy, and diplomacy, 5-7 ; world 
made safe for, 217, 263; Russia, 231- 
232; Bolshevist policy, 248; in Austria, 
264; in Germany, 269, 299, 362, 364; 
diplomacy, 290; after the War, 402- 
405, 408 ; industrial, post-war, 407-408 

Democratic Party in Poland, post-War, 407 

Democrats, Germany, 373 

Denikin, General, 242, 359 

Denmark, Danish Islands, 207 ; demands 
Schleswig, 360; acquires Schleswig, 375. 
(See also Scandinavia) 

Dependent states, construction of, 145 

Deportations of Belgians and French, 
144-145, 195 

Derby, Lord, 147-148 

De Robeck, Vice-Admiral, 85 

Destruction, by the Germans, 274, 377, 
393-395 

Determinism, and the War, 410 

Deutschland (Submarine), 166 

De Valcra, Eamonn, 311, 387 

Devastation, by the Germans. (See De- 
struction) 

Devlin (Irish leader), 159 

DeWet, Gen., 66-67 

Diala River, 283 

Diaz, General, 296, 318-319, 352-353 

Dictator, military, 291-292 

Dillon, John, 311 

Diplomacy, pre- War, 5-7 ; Teutonic and 
Allied, 57, 82; and a negotiated peace, 
288; democratic control, 290 

Dirigibles, 221 

Disarmament. (See Armament, limitation 
of) 

Disease, international control of, through the 
League of Nations, 381, 422 

Divine-right monarchy extinct, 402 

Dixmude, captured, 36 

Dmitriev, Radko, 46, 51 

Dobrudja, and Bulgaria, 1 23, 343 ; cap- 
tured, 188-191; autonomy, 254; given 
up by Rumania, 259; cession to Ru- 
mania, 383 

Dodecanese. (See Aegean islands) 

Dogger Bank, naval engagement, 62 

Domestic disturbances, 82 

Don Cossacks, anti-Bolshevik, 255; and 
the Soviets, 337 

Dorpat, captured, 258 

Douai, 35 ; captured, 39. 332 

Douaumont, 150-155 ; captured, 192 

Dover, raided, 74 

Draft, selective, 222 

Drama (Town), cession to Bulgaria, 123 



444 



INDEX 



Drang nach Osten, 136, 142 

Dresden (Cruiser), 60 

Drives, German, 143 

Drugs, dangerous, and the League of Na- 
tions covenant, 422 

Drummond, Sir Eric, 383, 423 

Dual Alliance (Franco-Russian), 6 

Dual Monarchy. (See Austria-Hungary) 

Dublin, Sinn Fein, 158-161; home-rule 
meetings, 3 10-3 n 

Dubno, captured, 173 

Dukla Pass, 48; abandoned, 101 

Duma. (See Russia, Duma) 

Dumba, Constantine, 207 

Diina River, 106-107 

Dunkirk, 35-36 

Durazzo, 135 ; captured, 136, 346 

Duval, 292 

Dwellings, destroyed, 394 

Dyeing industries, development of, 409 

East Prussia, invasion of, 40-43 

Ebert, Friedrich, 361-364, 372 

Economic blockade. (See Blockade) 

Economic resources, Allied and Central 
Powers compared, 81 ; Conference, Paris, 
i6g; rights, and nationalism, 397; in- 
dividualism, pre- War, 408 

Economics, scientific study of, 409 

Ecuador, severs relations with Germany, 
271, 388 

Education, and the Allied peace treaties, 
386; and science, 408-410; among the 
troops at the front, 410 

Educational value of camp and army life, 409 

Efficiency, German, 83 

Egypt, and Gt. Brit., 55, 71-72, 399; Mos- 
lem rebellions, 71, 82; and Turkey, 136- 
137; German rights renounced, 375; 
nationalism, 397 

Eichhorn, Field Marshal von, 337 

Einen, General von, 320-321 

Eisner, Kurt, 360, 363 

Eix, 152 

El Bassan, captured, 135, 346 

El Ramie, captured, 286 

Elections, Austria, 356 

Electoral reforms, Prussia, 269, 331 ; Ger- 
many, 362 ; Gt. Brit., and France, 403- 
404. (See also Suffrage, Women suffrage) 

Emdcn (Cruiser), 60-61 

Emmich, General von, 27 

Engineers, American railroad, and the 
Trans-Siberian railway, 340-341 

Engines, stolen, 394 

England. (See Great Britain) 

English army. (See British army) 

English navy. (See British navy) 



Entangling alliances, 204, 211, 400. (See 
also Alliances) 

Entente, alliance with Italy, 72-73; propa- 
ganda, 207-208; secret treaties, 220, 
252-253, 367; resume of membership, 
270-271; secret treaty with Japan, 370. 
(See also Alliances) 

Enver Pasha, 70, 82, 282, 347 

Epinal, 31 

Erdellij General, 242-243 

Erzberger, Mathias, 331, 357, 364 

Erzcrum, captured, 140 

Erzingian, captured, 142, 182 

Esperey, Gen. Franchet d', 32, 344-347, 
352, 359 

Espionage Act, U. S., 222 

Essad Pasha, 135-136 

Essen, Krupp guns, 23-24, 84-85, no; 
food riots, 170 

Est aires, captured, 308 

Esthonia, Provisional government, 238; 
and Mittel-Europa, 255, 334; inde- 
pendence, 341, 359; nationalism, 397; 
republican form of government, 402 

Eugene, Archduke, 47, 52 

Eupen, cession to Belgium, 374 

European War. (See Great War) 

Ewarts, General, 171, 230 

Excess profits tax act, 222 

Expeditionary (Allied) Force at Salonica, 
344 

Factors relied upon to win the war, 81-83 

Falkenhayn, Erich von, 40, 148, 184, 187- 
189, 192 

Famine, caused by the Turks, 390 

Far East, general peace in, 63-64 

Farmers, post-War prosperity, 406 

Fatherland Party, Germany, 166 

Favored-nation tariffs, 377 

Fayolle, General, 180, 306-307, 321 

Feisal, Prince, 368 

Feng, Kwo-Cheng, President of Chinese 
Republic, 271 

Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria, 84, 124-125, 
127, 190, 343, 345-346 

Ferdinand, King of Rumania, 182, 184 

Fere-Champenoise, 32 

Fere-en-Tardenois, captured, 323 

Finland, 54; constitution, 230; autonomy, 
237, 251, 255, 290, 359; peace treaty 
with Germany, Austria, and Russia, 
259; vanquished, 300; and Mittel-Europa, 
334-335 ; food supply, 392 ; nationalism, 
397 : republican form of government, 402 

Fire, liquid, 177 

Firth of Forth, surrender of German navy, 
359 



INDEX 



445 



Fisher, Herbert, 410 

Fishing vessels sunk, 394 

Fismes, captured, 314-315, 323 

Fiume, cession to Italy, 371, 385-386 

Five Great Powers, 95 ; Council of, 370- 
372 

Flanders, Battle of, 36, 278-281 

Flares and rockets, 303 

Fleury, captured, 155 

Foch, Ferdinand, 32-33, 117, 272, 276, 
313-316, 320-323, 326, 328, 332, 344, 
352, 356, 358, 368, 372 

Foodstuffs, from the Balkan States, 134; 
in Austria and Germany, 170, 192; U. S. 
to Poland, 196-197; to Gt. Brit., 219; 
Control and Shipping Acts, 222; dicta- 
torship, Hoover, 223; Russia, 227; 
American, 261 ; administratorship, Mi- 
chaelis, 268; for Germany, 269, 334; 
Siberia, 335, 338; diminished produc- 
tion, 392; post- War conditions, 392- 
393, 406 

Force, in international relations, 211, 270; 
moral, 290 ; habit of resorting to, 405- 
406. (See also Militarism) 

Ford, George B., 393 

Forts and fortifications, Poland, 104; Ger- 
man underground, 114; frailty of, 148; 
German, to be razed, 375 

Four, Council of, 370 

Fournet, Admiral du, igo 

Fourteen Points, 297-298, 332, 367 

France, alliances with Great Britain and 
Russia, 6 ; Germany declares war against, 
18; production of munitions, 118; de- 
clares war against Bulgaria, 126; de- 
portations, 144-145, 195; and the Ger- 
man peace, 198; not represented at 
Stockholm Peace Conference, 290 ; res- 
toration of all territory, 298; terri- 
torial demands, 366; alliance with U. S. 
and Gt. Brit., 370, 383 ; treaties with U. S. 
and Gt. Brit., 381; civilians killed, 390; 
public debt, 391-392 ; taxes, 392 ; damage 
and destruction, 394 ; foremost military 
power, 400; electoral reforms, 403-404 

Francis Ferdinand, archduke, assassina- 
tion, 13-14, 374 

Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 195 

Frankfort Assembly, 8 

Frederick II (the Great), of Prussia, 8 

Frederick, Archduke, 102, 172-173 

Frederick William I, of Prussia, 8 

Frederick William, Crown Prince of Ger- 
many and Prussia, 12, 27, 2g, 31-34, 36, 
149-155, 158, 185, 192, 277-278, 304, 
320, 361-362 
Free trade, socialist peace program, 290 



Freedom of the seas, 204, 206, 211, 214- 

215, 290, 298, 357, 37o 
French, Gen. Sir John, 28-29, 30-32, 62, 

115, 118, 147, 312 
French army, organization, 23-24; plan of 

defense, 25 ; advance halted, 28—31 ; 

successful resistance, 32-33; irresistible, 

40; losses, 120, 181, 314-315; artillery, 

178; battle-line, 323; in Mainz, 359; 

losses, 389 ; colonial army, losses, 390 
French Canadians, loyalty, 66 
French navy, 60; in the Dardanelles, 84- 

86 
French Revolution, and nationalization, 3 
Fresnes, 152 
Friedensturm, 320 
Frise, captured, 150 
Frontier disputes, 371 
Fuel administrator, Garfield, 223 

Gaelic League, 159 

Galicia, 41 ; Russian invasion, 43-50 ; re- 
covery by Austria, 99-102 ; Polish, 195- 
196; evacuated by Russians, 243; Poles 
and Ruthenians in, 263 ; repudiates 
Austrian rule, 355 ; mandatary of Po- 
land, 385 

Gallieni, General, 31, 148, 166 

Gallipoli Peninsula, 85-86, 88-89; failure 
of campaign, 122, 281-282; withdrawal 
from, 131, 133-134. 136, 139. Ui 

Garfield, Harry A., 223 

Gases, poisonous, 115-117, 177, 408 

Gaulois (Warship), 85 

Gaza, captured, 286 

Geddes, Sir Eric, 394 

Geneva, provisional agreement between 
Serbia and Jugoslavia, 354 ; seat of the 
League of Nations, 415 

Georgia, and Mittel-Europa, 335 

Georgians, autonomy, 238 

Gerard, James, 215 

German army, size of, 22 ; organization, 
22-24; position of divisions, 25-28, 
30-31; advance halted, 32; battle-lines, 
33. 35. 192, 242, 262, 272-274, 303, 305- 
306, 310; advance toward coast, 35- 
36; position at close of 1914, 37; losses, 
44, 48, 120, 155, 174, 178, 180-181, 192, 
242, 272-278, 280, 301, 307-308, 313, 
316, 323-324, 326, 328-330, 333, 389; 
retreat in Poland, 52; advantages, 99- 
100; equipment, 105; height of triumph, 
121-124; drives, 143; munitions, 147; 
• waning strength, 197; devastation of 
territory, 273-274; Sturmtruppen, 302, 
306; artillery, 304; conscription, 334; 
mutinies, 361 ; reduction of, 375 



446 



INDEX 



German army plans, general, 24-27, 40; 
against Russia, 102-103 ; on the Western 
Front, 148-149, 300-304, 307, 314-315- 
320; against Rumania, 187-188; against 
Italy, 294 

German colonies, conquest of, 65-68 ; African 
colonies, 67-69; restoration, 254; sur- 
rendered, 375 ; mandataries of other na- 
tions, 381, 401, 420-421; lost, 398 

German East Africa, cession to Gt. Brit., 
375. (See also Africa, German colonies) 

German navy, activities, 59-61, 63; losses, 
64, 166, 398; ships seized, 222; mutinies, 
356, 360; surrender of warships, 357, 
359; revolution, 362; reduction of, 37s - 
376 

German peace, prospect of, in 191 6, 143; 
peace talk in Germany, 166-167; "Peace 
drives," 191-200, 287; peace offer to 
Russia, 258; peace resolution, 267- 
268; negotiations, 269; hopes of, in 1917, 
299; "Peace offensive" in 1918, 320; 
a dictated peace to Russia and Rumania, 

364 

German Southwest Africa, cession to British 
Union of South Africa, 375. (See also 
Africa, German colonies) 

German state of Austria, 355 

Germans in Bohemia, 386 

Germany, alliance with Austria, 6, 317 ; 
nationalism, 8, 396-397; iron ring, 11; 
and Japan, 1 1 ; and China, 1 1 ; declares 
war, 18; invasion of Belgium and France, 
32-33; gains and losses, 39-40; com- 
merce, 58, 61 ; conquest of colonies, 
65-69; influence in Turkey, 69; im- 
perialism, 72, 143; counter-offensive on 
the seas, 73-79; government control of 
food supply, 76; war-loans, 81; economic 
resources, 81 ; diplomacy, 82 ; influence 
in Greece and Rumania, 84; conquers 
Poland, 102-107; "frightfulness," 117; 
masters the Near East, 121-142; con- 
quers Serbia, 124-129; trade in the Near 
East, 134-282; optimism, 143, 146- 
148, 166, 197; fails to obtain a decision 
in 1916, 143-167; unity of command, 
144; Fatherland Party, 166; blockade, 
against, 170; Peace Drive, 191-200; 
Patriotic Auxiliary Service Act, 195 ; 
foodstuffs for Poland, 196-197 ; con- 
spirators in U. S., 206-207 ; reply to 
President Wilson's note on war-aims, 
209; rules for safety of U. S. shipping, 
214-215; territorial demands, 254-255; 
acquisitions, 258; domination over Slavs, 
263; makes the supreme effort, 299- 
325; madness, "Whom the Gods would 



destroy," 299-304; drive against the 
British, 304-313 ; Battle of Picardy, 
304-313; drive against the French, 
313-316; Battles of the Aisne and Oise, 
3i3 _ 3 I 6; drive against the Italians, 
317-320; final drive, 2d Battle of the 
Marne, 320-325; national unity, 360; 
Empire lasts through two reigns only, 
361 ; Constituent National Assembly, 
361-363, 374; republican form of gov- 
ernment, 362; provisional constitution, 
364; excluded from the Peace Confer- 
ence, 367; public debt, 391-392; state- 
system, 398 

Ghent, 35 ; captured, 332 ; entered by 
King Albert, 358 

Gild socialism, post- War, 407 

Gilinsky (aid-de-camp to the Tsar), 169 

Giolitti, 94 

Gneisenau, Count, 8 

Gneisenau (Cruiser), 60 

Goeben (Cruiser), 59-60, 70 

Goliath (Battleship), 88 

Golitzin, Prince, 226-227 

Goltz, Marshal von der, 139, 141 

Good Hope (Warship), 60 

Goose Ridge (Cote de l'Oie), captured, 

153, 277 

Goremykin, Premier, 109, in, 226 

Gorizia, 91; captured, 176, 182, 184, 295 

Gorlice, captured, 101 

Gough, Sir Hubert, 305-307, 312 

Gouraud, General, 321, 329, 332 

Gourko, General, 230, 242 

Government ownership, Bolshevist policy, 
248; Soviet policy, 250; transportation 
and communication, 406 

Gradisca, 91, 93 

Grain, Rumanian, 182; American, 223; 
Siberia, 338 

Grappa, Monte, Austrian defeat, 352 

Graudenz, 42 

Great Britain, alliances with Japan, France 
and Russia, 6; approach of the War, 
15-20; masters the seas, 58-79; al- 
liance with Japan, 63 ; loyalty of colonies, 
65-69; alliance with Russia, 69; im- 
perialism, 72; Ministry of Munitions, 
83; Coalition Cabinet, 83; production 
of munitions, 118; declares war against 
Bulgaria, 126; War-weariness, 146- 
147; changes in Cabinet, 193; North- 
cliffe and English journalism, 193, i°7, 
208; electoral reforms, 262; not repre- 
sented at Stockholm Peace Conference, 
290; and Irish difficulties, 300; terri- 
torial demands, 366; alliance with U. S. 
and France, 370, 383; treaty with 



INDEX 



447 



France against Germany, 381 ; British 
subjects killed at sea, victims of air raids 
and bombardments, 390; public debt, 
391-392 ; loans to Russia and Italy, 
392 ; fund to Serbia, 393 ; imperialism, 
399 ; electoral reforms, 403 

Great Britain, army. (See British army) 

Great Britain, navy. (See British navy) 

Great Powers, 5-6; at war, 18; Five, 95; 
changes in, 398 

Great War, to be a long war, 80; winning 
factors relied upon, 81-83 ; an d former 
wars, 201; turning point, 313; nations 
engaged in, 388 

Greece and Asia Minor, 73 ; and the En- 
tente, 84; territorial demands, 87, 123, 
253, 366, 371; armed neutrality, 130- 
134 ; surrender of telegraphs and postal 
service, 190; restoration, 254; enters 
the War, 271, 285; evacuation by Bul- 
gars, 345 ; treaty not ratified, 383; na- 
tionalism, 397 

Greek army, mobilization, 130; battle- 
line, 285 ; losses, 389 

Greeks, massacred or starved, 390 

Green Book, Italy, 89 

Gregorian calendar, 265 

Grey, Sir Edward, 19, 125-126, 162, 193 

Grodek position, 101 

Groeber (Centrist deputy), 331 

Griinewald, Battle of, 53 

Guatemala, severs relations with Ger- 
many, 271 

Guchkov, Minister of War and Marine, 
230, 234, 245 

Guelf, House of, 402 

Guepratte, Rear-Admiral, 85 

Guesde, 289 

Guillamat, General, 285, 344 

Gumbinnen, 42 

Guns, 23-24. (See also Artillery; Ma- 
chine guns) 

Haase, Hugo, 166, 363 

Habsburg, House of, 57, 264, 266, 346, 
349-351, 353, 355-3S6, 365, 402 

Hague, Tribunal, 17; proposed peace con- 
ferences, 198 

Haifa, captured, 347 

Haig, Sir Douglas, 147, 177, 273, 275-276, 
278, 301, 305, 308, 313, 320, 329 

Haiti, German conspirators, 207; severs 
relations with Germany, 271 

Halicz, captured, 44, 242-243 

Haller, Joseph, 350 

Ham, captured, 306 

Hamburg, revolution, 361 

Hamilton, Sir Ian, 87-88, 133 



Hampshire (Cruiser), 166 

Harbin, seat of Temporary Government of 
Autonomous Siberia, 337 

Hardinge, Lord, 66 

Hartlepool, raided, 74 

Harvest failure, Rumania and Bulgaria, 
393_ 

Harwich, surrender of German submarines 
at, 359 

Hausen, General von, 26, 28, 31 

Hedjaz, independence, 183, 282-283; army, 
and the Turks, 286, 346-347 ; protecto- 
rate under Great Britain, 384, 388, 399; 
army statistics, 389; nationalism, 397 

Heeringen, General von, 27, 29, 32 

Heights of the Meuse, 149-155 

Helfferich, Karl, 268, 304 

Heligoland, naval engagement, 62 ; de- 
molished, 376 

Henderson, Arthur, 193, 235, 290-291 

Herbertshohe, 67 

Hertling, Count, 269-270, 288-289, 328, 
330-331 

Heuvel, van der, 368 

High cost of living, 392, 406 

Hindenburg, General von, 42-43, 45-47, 
50-52, 171, 174, 184-185, 187, 270, 
272-278, 300-301, 304, 328, 361 

Hindenburg Line, 280-281, 326, 328 

Hindenburg's Drive, 102-107, 109, 117, 
120 

Hintze, Admiral von, 320 

Hipper, Vice-Admiral von, 165 

History, scientific study of, 409 

Hoetzendorf, Field Marshal von, 318- 
319 

Hohenzollern, House of, 8, 259, 282, 285, 
356, 364-365, 402 

Holland. (See Netherlands) 

"Holy War," 71 

Home rule for Ireland, 158-161, 262-263, 
3 10-3 1 1 

Horns, captured, 347 

Honduras, severs relations with Germany, 
271 

Hoover, Herbert, 223, 392 

Home, Sir Henry, 307, 328-329 

Horvath, General, 337 

Hours of labor, and the Treaty of Ver- 
sailles, 378-379; post-War, 406 

House, Colonel, 368 

House of Commons, elections under new 
reform act, 403 

Howitzers. (See Guns) 

Hughes, Charles, 208 

Hughes, William, 368 

Humbert, 292 

Hunding Line, 332 



448 



INDEX 



Hungary, grain fields, 102 ; domination over 
Rumans, Slovaks, and Jugoslavs, 263 ; 
discontent, 265; declared a republic, 
355. 383, 402 ; stripped of non-Magyar 
peoples, 384; public debt, 391; na- 
tionalism, 307 

Husein, Sherif of Mecca, 183, 282-283 

Hussein Kemal Pasha, 72 

Hutier, General von, 243-244, 303, 306, 
31S-316, 320 

Hydroplanes, 221 

Hymans, Paul, 368 

Illinois (Ship), 216 

Imperialism, 4, 72, 94, 202, 236, 288, 364, 
399-402 

Income tax act, 222; taxes, 392 

Indefatigable (Cruiser), 165 

Indemnities, Bolshevist policy, 254; so- 
cialist program, 289; by Central empires, 
291 ; paid by Bulgaria, 384 

Independents, Germany, 289 

India, loyalty, 66; and a "Holy War," 
71; Moslem rebellions, 82; troops at 
Gallipoli, 122; and the Turks, 137; army, 
losses, 3go ; nationalism, 397 

Individualism, economic, pre-War, 408 

Industrial revolution, 205 ; situation in 
Russia, 225; solidarity, 289; revolution 
in Germany, 361 ; leaders, and a negotiated 
peace, 288; conditions, and the Treatj of 
Versailles, 378-379; convention, 383; 
disputes, state intervention, 406; labor 
hours, post-War, 406; democracy, post- 
war, 407-408; competition, 411; condi- 
tions, and the League of Nations cove- 
nant, 422. (See also Labor Party) 

Infiltration tactics, 302-303, 306, 318- 
3iQ» 321 

Inflation of currency, 392 

Inflexible (Warship), 85 

Influenza, deaths, caused by the War, 3go 

Insterburg, 42 

Intellectuals of Germany, 363 

Inter-Allied Conference, 235, 244, 312; 
General Staff, 272; Naval Board, 272; 
Supreme War Council, 36g. (See also 
Allies) 

Inter-Nation, result of the Great War, 398 

The International, 289 

International anarchy. (Sec Anarchy, 
international) 

International law, capture of merchant- 
men, 76-78; arbitration, 204; Repara- 
tion Commission, 377; Labor Office, 
378; Labor Conference, annual, 37S- 
379; cooperation, 379; Red Cross So- 
ciety, 410; Justice, Permanent Court of, 



417; engagements, articles 18 to 21 in 
the League of Nations covenant, 420; 
bureaus, and the League of Nations 
covenant, 422 

International Peace Conference, Socialists', 
at Stockholm, 267, 289-292 

Internationalism, 205, 396 

Invincible (Cruiser), 165 

Ipek, captured, 135 

Ireland, loyalty, 66; home rule, 66, 159- 
161, 262-263, 310-312, 387; discontent, 
146; Unionists, 158; Sinn Fein rebellion, 
158-161; troops, 180; emigrants and 
Anglophobia, 204; constitution, 263; 
compulsory military service, 310-311; 
Parliament suppressed, 387; self-de- 
termination, 397; representation, 403 

Irkutsk, captured, 338 

Iron ring, n, 13; anil steel resources, 40; 
production in Russia, 259; crosses, 362; 
industry damaged, 393-394 

Irredentist agitation, 89-97. (See also 
Italy; Trentino) 

Irresistible (Warship), 85 

Islitip, captured, 345 

Isonzo River, 97, 113, 156, 174-175, 295- 
297 

Italian army, and navy, 95 ; battle-lines, 
156, 294; losses, 157, 294-295, 389; 
fraternization with Austrian troops, 294 

Italian navy, I'iave River, 95, 319 

Italy, alliance with Germany and Austria, 
5-6; and the Dual Monarchy, 15, 57; 
Pact of London (1914), 20, 95 ; enters the 
War, 89-98; Treaty of London (1915), 
92-93; alliance with the Entente, 72- 
73; and Allied diplomacy, 82; neu- 
trality, 84; ^gean Islands, 87; enters 
the War, 89-97; Triple Alliance, 90; 
geography of frontier, 96-97 ; declares 
war against Bulgaria, 126; defense, 
156-158; and the German peace, 198; 
territorial concessions, 253; frontiers to 
be readjusted, 298; territorial demands, 
366,371; public debt, 391-392; national- 
ism, 307 ; imperialism, 400 

Ivangorod (Fortress), 104-106 

lvanov, General, 44, 51, 172, 228 

|ai obstadt, captured, 244 

radar, Battle of, 56 

Jaffa, 1 aptured, 276 

Jaffa -Jerusalem railway, 286 

Jagow, Gottlieb von, 16, 197 

Jakova, captured, 135 

Japan, alliance with Great Britain, 6, 63' 

and Russia, 12; ultimatum to Germany. 

62 ; enters the War, 62-65 ; Russo-Jap- 



INDEX 



449 



anese War, 108; German conspirators, 
207; and the Allies, 216; and Shantung, 
220; territorial demands, 366, 371; secret 
treaty with the Entente, 370 ; and China, 
400 
Japanese army, losses, 64, 389; in Siberia, 

340-341 

Japanese navy, aid to Great Britain, 62-65 ; 
takes islands of the South Pacific, 67 

Jaroslav, captured, 13-46, 48, 99, 101 

Jellicoe, Admiral Sir John, 165 

Jerii ho, captured, 347 

Jerusalem, captured, 286, 346 

Jerusalem-Jaffa railway, 286 

Jewish Welfare Hoard, 410 

Jews, in Poland, 195; equality, 254; Zion- 
ism, 287, 397; of Rumania, 38O; mas- 
sacred or starved, 390; international 
protection, 307. (See also Palestine) 

JoSre, General, 28-31, 87, 131, 14S, 151, 
155, 169, 193, 220, 275 

Joint management, post-War, 407 

Jonnart, Charles, 284, 293 

Joseph, Archduke, 384 

Joseph Ferdinand, Archduke, 45, 100, 105 

Joseph Frederick, Archduke, 242 

Journal, of Paris (Newspaper), 292; Bonnet 
Rouge (Newspaper), 292 

Journalism, NorthclilTe, journals in Eng- 
land, 193, 197, 208; Germany, 301, 304 

Jugoslavia, autonomy, 263, 265, 349, 351- 
356; territorial demands, 371, 386; 
Adriatic boundary line, 385-3S6; food 
supply, 393 ; nationalism, 397 

Jugoslavs, mutinies, 82, 317; loyal to 
Austria-Hungary, 96 

Junkers, 10, 362 

Justice, Permanent Court of International, 
417 

Jutland, Battle of, 165 

K. O. N. (Polish Committee of National 
Defense), 196 

Kaiser Wilhelmsland, captured, 67 

Kaledine, General, 245, 255 

Kamerun, French in, 68; partitioned, 
375 ; mandatary under France, 400 

Kamio, General, 64 

Kantara, railroad, 282, 285 

Karagatch, cession to Bulgaria, 125 

Karolyi, Count Michael, 355, 384 

Kasan, captured, 338 

Kastoria, captured, 189 

Kato, Baron, 63 

Kautsky, Karl, 363 

Kavala, cession to Bulgaria, 87, 123; cap- 
tured, 189-190 

Keckau, captured, 243 



Kemmcl, Mont, captured, 308 

Kercnsky, Alexander, 230, 234-235, 239- 
241, 244-247, 252, 290, 341 

Khvostov, Alexis, 111 

Kiao-chao, 60, 62-64 ; cession to Japan, 375 

Kiel, 59; revolution, 362 

Kiel Canal, internationalization, 376, 381 

Kii \ , 1 aptured, 258 

kilid Bahr (Fort), 85, 88-89 

Kimpolung, captured, 47 

Kirlibaba Pass, 47 

Kitchener, Lord, 21, 25, 39, 83, 115, 133, 
166, 169 

Klotz, Louis, 293 

Kluck, General von, 3, 26, 28, 30-33 

Knights of Columbus, 410 

Koerbcr, Ernst von, 264 

koevess, General von, 135 

Col hak, Admiral, 337, 341, 387 

Kolomea, captured, 243 

Konigsberg, 42 

Komgsberg (Cruiser), 61 

Korea, Russo-Japanese War, 108 ; na- 
tionalism, 397 

Koritza, captured, 189 

Kornilov, General, 230, 243, 245-246 

Koroshctz, Anton, 354 

Kossovo, 129 

Kovno, captured, 106-107 

Kragujevatz, captured, 128 

Kramarcz, Karcl, 353-354, 368 

krasnik, captured, 44, 105 

kriemhilde Line, 332 

Krithia, 88 

Krunprinz Wilkelm (Cruiser), 61 

Kropotkin, 245 

Krupp, no; guns, 23-24, 84-85. {See 
also Munitions) 

Krylenko, General, 247 

Kiihlmann, Richard von, 254, 256, 258, 
268, 270, 319 

Kultur, 147, 201, 210, 274, 395, 405 

Kum Kale (Fort), 85-86 

kun, Bela, 384 

kuprikeui, defeat of Turks at, 140 

kuprulu, captured, 127 

Kuropatkin, General, 171 

Kusmanek, General von, 48 

Kustendil, captured, 127 

Kut-el-Amara, 137-139; siege, 141-142; 
captured, 282, 347 

La Bassde, 36 

Labor Party, England, 21-22, 290, 406, 408; 

in Ireland, and conscription, 311. (See 

also headings under Industrial) 
Labyrinth (Trenches and tunnels), 117 
Lacazc, Admiral, 193 



45° 



INDEX 



Lafayette, 203 

Laibach, riots, 349 ; Pan-Slavic Congress, 350 

Lambros, Premier, 285 

Lammasch, Professor, 353 

Land ownership, Bolshevist policy, 248; 
Soviet policy, 250; estates, Rumania, 
404; nationalization in Great Britain, 
406; small holdings, 407 

Landlords, eliminated in Germany, 362 

Landrecies, captured, 332 

Landsturm, 22 

Landwehr, 22 

Language, free use of, 386 

Lanrezac, General, 29-30 

Lansdowne, Lord, 291 

Lansing, Robert, 351, 368-369 

Laon, 39, 275 

Larissa, captured, 284 

Latin-America, German conspirators, 207 

Latvia, 121; autonomy, 238, 254, 256, 
359; and Mittel-Europa, 255, 334; van- 
quished, 300 ; nationalism, 397 ; re- 
publican form of government, 402 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 66 

Laventie, captured, 308 

Law, Andrew Bonar, 193, 246 

League of Free Nations, 270, 366-367 

League of Nations, 169, 203, 209-211, 298, 
331-332, 37o-37i. 375, 378, 30S, 411; 
Covenant of, 379, 383, 399-401 ; text, 
413-423; first meeting of Council, 383; 
reservations, 399; list of original mem- 
bers, 423 

League to Enforce Peace, 208 

Ledebour (Socialist leader), 166 

Leipzig, revolution, 361 

Leipzig (Cruiser), 60 

Lemberg, 43-44; captured, 48, 99, 101, 
242 ; riots, 349 

Le Mort Homme, captured, 277 

Lenin, Nikolai, 240-241, 244, 247, 250, 
252, 258, 335-336, 384, 387-388 _ 

Lens, 117, 119; British objective, 275; 
captured, 328 

Leopold, Prince of Bavaria, 185, 242 

Lesina, cession to Italy, 386 

Lettland. (See Latvia) 

Lettow-Vorbeck, General von, 68 

Liberal Party, in Canada, 66; in Russia, 
108-111, 194, 226; in England, 158- 
159; in Germany, 267, 361 

Liberals, Young Turks. (See Young Turks) 

Liberia, enters the War, 271 ; German rights 
renounced, 375 

Liberty Loan Acts, U. S., 222 

Liberty, personal, 403-406 

Libya, and Italy, 92 

Lichnowsky, Prince, 15 



Licbknecht, Karl, 166, 356, 360, 362-363 

Liege, captured, 27, 5^ J Billow's proclama- 
tion, 38 

Lille, 30; captured, 35, 39, 332 

Linsingen, General von, 47, 100-101 

Liquid fire, 177 

Lissa, cession to Italy, 386 

Lithuania, Teutonic conquest, 121; auton- 
omy, 238, 254-256, 359; vanquished, 
300; and Mittel-Europa, 334-335; and 
White Russia, 336; starvation in, 390; 
nationalism, 397 ; republican form of 
government, 402 

Lithuanians in Russia, 54 

Little Russia, independence, 238, 255 

Littlefield, Walter, 389 

Livenza River, 296, 352 

Living, high cost of, 392, 406 

Livonia, and Mittel-Europa, 255 ; in- 
dependence, 341 

Lloyd, Sir William, 368 

Lloyd George, David, 83, 166-167, 169, 
193, 198, 262, 297, 311, 36S-370, 381, 
387, 403 

Loans, U. S. to the Allies, 223 

Locomotives, German, surrendered, 357 

London, Pact of (1914), 20, 95; Treaty of 
London (1915), 92-93 

London, raided, 74 

Longwy, captured, 30 

Loos, captured, 118 

Loucheur, Louis, 293 

Louis, King of Bavaria, 360, 362 

Louis XIV, 396 

Louise, queen of Prussia, 8 

Louvain, captured, 27-28; destruction of, 
37-38; manuscripts and prints destroyed, 
377; Library, 394 

Lovtchen, captured, 135 

Lowestoft, raided, 74 

Ludd, captured, 286 

Ludendorff, General, 184, 254, 270, 294, 
300-303, 310, 313-321, 324-325, 327- 
328, 342, 344, 346, 351-352, 356, 364 

Liideritz Bay, 67 

Lusitania (Steamship), 78, 163, 206, 372 

Lutsk, captured, 173 

Luxburg, Count, 271 

Luxemburg, Rosa, 166, 362-363 

Luxemburg (Town), 19; captured, 300, 358- 

359 _ 
Luxuries, taxes, 392 
Lvov, Prince George, 229-230, 232, 234- 

237, 239-241, 243-244, 246-248, 252, 

340-341 
Lvov (Town). (See Lemberg) 
Lyautey, Hubert, 193, 276 
Lys River, 332 



INDEX 



45i 



Macedonia and Bulgaria, 87, 123, 183; 

Allied failure, 282; battle-line, 285; 

offensive of (1918), 344-346; cession to 

Serbia, 383 
Machine-gun, "nests," 113, ^33', Allied, 

177-178; development of, 408 
Machine tools stolen, 394; works looted, 

394 

Machines, a war of, 99-100, 115 

Mackensen, General von, 51-52, 100-102, 
104-105, 107, 127, 129, 143, 182, 187- 
189, 192-193, 242-243, 270 

Mackensen's Drives, 99-102; into Galicia, 
117; against Russia, 120; into Serbia, 
127-131 

MacNeill, General, 161 

Magyars. (See Hungary) 

Mails, by airplane, 409 

Mainz, occupied by Allied troops, 357; 
administered by French army, 359; 
evacuated by Allies, 377 

Majestic (Battleship), 88 

Makarov, Russian Minister, 109 

Malines, 28; captured, 35 

Malinoff, Premier, 344 

Malmedy, cession to Belgium, 374 

Malvy, Louis, 292 

Mandataries, German colonies,. 370, 375, 
381; Near East, 384; of France, 400; 
defined in the League of Nations covenant, 
401-402; 420-421 

Mangin, General, 192; 321, 323, 326, 332 

Mannerheim, General, 335, 359 

Manoury, General, 32 

Manuscripts destroyed by Germans, 377 

Marianne Islands, occupied by the Jap- 
anese, 67 

Marienburg, 42 

Maritz, Gen., 66-67 

Marne, 1st Battle, 31-32, 33, 40, 148, 152, 155, 
324; 2d Battle, 320-325 

Marshall Islands, occupied by the Jap- 
anese, 67 

Martial law, in Bohemia and Croatia, 351 

Marwitz, General von der, 303, 306, 320 

Marx, Karl, 239, 289 

Marxian socialism, post-War, 406-407 

Masaryk, Thomas G., 353-354 

Massacres, by the Turks, 390 

Massey, William, 368 

Masurian Lakes, Battle of, 42 

Materialism, and the War, 410 

Maubeuge, captured, 30, 39, 332 

Maude, Gen. Sir Stanley, 182, 283-284 

Maud'huy, General, 36 

Maximilian, Chancellor Prince, 331, 356, 
360-361 

Maxwell, Gen. Sir John, 161 



Maynooth, meeting protesting against 
conscription, 311 

Meat, American, 223 

Mecca railway, 136 

Medicine, preventive, development of, 409 

Memel, cession to Lithuania, 374 

Menin, captured, 332 

Menshiviki, 239, 240-241, 244 

Mental disorders, treatment of, 409 

Merchant marine, Germany, 398 

Merchantmen, sunk, 163-164, 206, 219- 
224, 254, 394-395; armed against sub- 
marines, 216, 290; surrender of captured 
Allied, 353 

Mercier, Cardinal, 38-39 

Merville, captured, 308 

Mesopotamia, and Great Britain, 55, 71-72, 
: 37, 399; Turkish sovereignty, 136- 
137, 182; Allied failure, 282; occupied 
by Allies, 284; British mandatary, 384 

Messines, captured, 278; Ridge, captured, 
308 

Met/., 22, 34; captured, 358 

Meuse River, Battle of, 152-155, 192; 
Valley, 333 

Mexico, German alliance with, 216 

Mezieres, captured, 30 

Michael, Grand Duke of Russia, 229 

Michaelis, George, 268-269, 288-289 

Militarism, 4-7; German, 8-13, 364, 395- 
396, 398; Prussian, 82 

Military, dictator, 291-292 ; training in 
mandataries, 401, 421; surgery, develop- 
ment of, 409 

Milk supply, decrease, 393 

Millerand, Alexandre, 83 

Milner, Lord, 193, 313 

Milyukov, Paul, no, 194, 228, 230, 233- 
234. 245-246 

Minerals, Mittel-Europa, 144 

Mines, submarine, North Sea, 59; neutrals 
slain by, 390 ; estimate of sinkings, 395 ; 
floating, 74; explosive, on the Messines- 
Wytschaete ridge, 278 

Mines, in Galicia, 102; copper, 134; na- 
tionalization of, in Great Britain, 406 

Minority socialists, Germany. (See Social- 
ists, Germany) 

Mirbach, Count von, 337 

Missions, Christian, inviolability guar- 
anteed, 410 

Mitrovitza, captured, 129 

Mittel-Europa, 69, 72, 136, 142-145, 147, 
166, 168, 170, 182-183, 185, 191, 195, 
197-198, 201, 213, 217, 225, 253-255, 
262-263, 266, 269-271, 282, 284, 289, 
294, 297, 300, 318, 325, 334-335.342-343, 
346, 348. 35o, 356, 360, 363, 365, 367, 396 



452 



INDEX 



Mobilization, 17-24 
Moderates, in Germany, 266 
Moewe (Raider), 162 
Mohammed V, Sultan, 347 
Mohammed VI, Sultan, 347 
Moldavia, captured, 189 
Moltke, Helmuth, Count von, 8 
Moltke, Helmuth von, Chief of the Gen- 
eral Staff, 27, 40, 321 
Monarchist agitation in Germany, 362 
Monarchy, and the War, 402 
Monastir, 123; captured, 129, 190, 2S4 
Monfalcone, 91 
Monmouth (Warship), 60 
Monro, General, 133 

Monroe doctrine, 204-205, 207, 211, 380, 
400; between China and Japan, 366, 
400 ; League of Nations, 420 
Mons, captured, 30, 332 
Mont Kemmel, captured, 308 
Mont St. Quentin, captured, 273 
Montdidier, captured, 307, 327 
Monte Asolone, captured, 296 
Monte Ciove, 157 

Monte Grappa, Austrian defeat, 352 
Monte Pasubio, 157 
Monte San Michele, 176 
Monte Seisemol, 352 
Monte Tomba, captured, 296 
Montenegrin army, 55, 57; losses, 389 
Montenegro, enters the War, 19-20, 73 ; 
refuge of King Peter, 129; conquest of, 
135-137 ; restoration and indemnities, 
254, 298; and Jugoslavia, 263; Allied 
failure, 282 ; vanquished, 300 ; cleared of 
Austrians, 346; Jugoslav control, 354; 
disappears, 396-397; King Nicholas de- 
posed in favor of King Peter of Serbia, 
402 
Montmedy, captured, 30, 39 
Moreuil, 306 

Morocco, and a "Holy War," 71; Mos- 
lem rebellions, 82 ; German rights re- 
nounced, 375; protectorate under France, 
400 
Mortality, Poland, 393 
Mortars. (See Guns) 

Moscow, congress of Zemstvos, in; and 
the revolution, 228; Extraordinary Na- 
tional Conference at, 245; seat of gov- 
ernment, 248 
Moslem unrest, 71 ; rebellions, 82 
Most-favored-nation tariffs, 377 
Mosul 284; captured, 347 
Motor lorries, German, surrendered, 357 
Motorcycles, 24 
Mudra, Gen. von, 320-321 
Mudros, Turkish armistice signed, 348 



Miihlon, Dr., 16 

Miilhausen, captured, 28 

Miiller, Hermann, 374 

Muller, Karl von, 60-61 

Munich, food riots, 170 

Municipalities, Union of, in Russia, 194, 
225 

Munitions, guns, 23-24; Krupp guns, 
84-85, no; Allied lack of, 115-117; 
production in Great Britain and France, 
118; in Germany, 119; Allied supply, 
168; trade in, 206; supplied by U. S., 
223 ; for Germany, 269 ; manufacture 
of, 415-416; control of, League of Na- 
tions covenant, 380, 401, 421-422. (See 
also Artillery) 

Murman railway, 339-340 

Murmansk, Allied Expeditionary Force, 
339-340 

Murray, Sir Archibald, 282, 285-286 

Mush, captured, 140 

Namur, captured, 28, 33 

Nancy, 29 

Naphtha deposits of Baku, 341 

Napoleon I, 19, 396 

Napoleon III, 19 

Narew River, fortresses, 104 

Narva, captured, 258 

National Constituent Assembly, of Russia, 
228-229, 244, 248-249, 251-252, 341; 
of Austria, 356; of Germany, 361-363, 374 

National councils of the Austro-Hun- 
garian peoples, 349 

National Guard, U. S., 222 

National Liberals in Germany, 267 

National Volunteers in Ireland, 159 

Nationalism, 3-7, 396-398; and the 
Catholic Church, 410 

Nationalists, in Ireland, 159-161, 310- 
312; in Russia, 237 

Naumann, Friedrich, 6g 

Navy League, Germany, 13 

Nazareth, captured, 347 

Near East. (See Balkan States, Turkey, 
Armenia, etc.) 

Negotiated peace, 288, 292. (See also 
Peace) 

Negotin, captured, 127 

Nesle, captured, 306 

Netherlands, loss of trade, 79; reduction 
of armaments, 360 ; refuge of William II, 
361 ; special convention with Belgium, 
385; neutrality, 388; anti-royalist de- 
monstrations, 402 

Neuilly, treaty signed by Bulgaria, 383 

Neutral nations, 388; civilians slain by 
submarines, 390 



INDEX 



453 



Neutrality, armed, 146; U. S., 216-217 
Neutralization of straits, 254 
Neuve Chapelle, 36; captured, 115 
Neuve Eglise, captured, 308 
New era begins, 365-411; losses of bel- 
ligerents, 388-395 
New Mexico, bribe to Mexico, 216 
New York Times Current History, 389, 

New Zealand, loyalty, 68; territorial de- 
mands, 371 ; army, losses, 390 

Newfoundland, loyalty, 66 

Nicaragua, severs relations with Ger- 
many, 271 

Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 110-112, 194, 
198, 217, 225-230, 233, 235, 239, 338 

Nicholas, Grand Duke of Russia, 42, 46, 
S3. 99. 105-106, no, 139-142, 182, 226, 
229 

Nicholas, King of Montenegro, 135, 354 

Nieuport, 149 

Nish, captured, 128, 346 

Nitti, Francesco, 297, 371, 385 

Nivelle, General, 155, 192, 194, 273, 275- 
276, 292 

Nixon, Gen. Sir John, 137, 142 

Northcliffe, Lord, 193, 197, 208 

Northern Railway, damages, 394 

Norway, acquires Spitzbergen, 385. {See 
also Scandinavia) 

Noske, Gustav, 364 

Novibazar, captured, 129 

Novo Georgievsk, 106 

Noyon, 177, 180; captured, 273, 306, 
326 

Numberg (Cruiser), 60 

Oath of Czech and Jugoslav representatives 

to dismember the Dual Empire, 350-351 
Ocean (Warship), 85 
Octobrists, Russia, 236-237 
Odessa, raided, 70; and Austro-German 

trade, 259 
Oil-wells, in Galicia, 102 ; in Rumania, 

192 
Oise, Battle of the, 313-316 
Old Armenia, captured, 282 
Omsk, All-Russian government, 340 
"Open door" for colonies, 290 
Opium traffic, and the League of Nations 

covenant, 422 
Oppressed nationalities, resurgence of, 348- 

356 
Orange Free State, loyalty, 66 
Orlando, Vittorio, 297, 368-369, 371, 385 
Orlov, Colonel, 337 
Orsova, captured, 187-188 
Ossowietz, captured, 106-107 



Ostend, occupied by the Germans, 35-36; 
Allied objective, 278; harbor closed by 
ships sunk, 310; captured, 332 

Otani, General, 340 

Ottoman Empire. {See Turkey) 

Ourcq River, 323 

Pacific islands, and Japan, 400 

Pacifism, 199, 212: and a negotiated peace, 
288 ; British, 291 ; French, 292 ; Italian, 
293; Russian, 294; German, 364 

Pact of London (1914), 20, 95 ; Treaty of 
London (1915), 92-93 

Padercwski, Ignace, 359 

Painleve, Paul, 276, 293 

Palestine, Turkish sovereignty, 136-137; 
British offensive, 285 ; campaign in, 
285-287; British mandatary, 384; na- 
tionalism, 397; and Great Britain, 399. 
{See also Jews) 

Pams, Jules, 293 

Pan-German League, 13 

Pan-Slavic Congress, 350 

Panama, joins the Allies, 218, 271 

Panama Canal, neutralization, 254 

Papal appeals for peace, 266 

Papen, von, 207 

Paper-money issues, 392 

Paris, menaced by the Germans, 26, 31, 
74, 147, 301, 314, 320, 323; War Coun- 
cil, 169; Conference to Revise War- 
Aims, 246-247 ; Allied Conference, 272 ; 
attacked by long-range guns, 304; Pre- 
liminary Peace Conference, 304 

Paris Journal (Newspaper), 292 

Paris-to-Chalons railway, 314 

Paris-to-Nancy railway, 320 

Parliament, English, elections, 403 

Pashitch, Nikola, 265, 354, 368 

Passchcndaelc Ridge, captured, 278-280, 
308, 329 

Pasubio, Monte, 157 

Patriotic Auxiliary Service Act, 195 

Patrol boats, 221 

Pau, Paul, 28 

Pax Germanica, 143 

Pax Romana Germanica, 396 

Payment of damages, by Germany, 377 

Peace Conference, Germany excluded, 367 ; 
Preliminary Peace Conference, 367- 
372 ; Supreme Council, 383. {See also 
Brest-Litovsk Treaty) 

Peace Conference, Socialists', at Stock- 
holm, 267, 289-292 

Peace Congress, 220, 290, 292, 398; hopes 
entertained, 365; facts to be faced, 366; 
Definitive Peace Congress, 372; and 
Ireland, 397 



454 



INDEX 



Peace, German. (See German peace) 

Peace, Soviet, 241 ; in Russia, 259 ; papal 
appeals, 266; negotiated peace, 28S, 
292 ; program, socialist, conditions of, 
289-290; forced on Rumania by Bucha- 
rest Treaty, 297; Allied, 325; terms sub- 
mitted to Germany, 372 

"Peace through victory," 293, 297 

Peace treaties, Finland with Germany, 
Austria and Russia, 259; Allies, 383- 
388. (See also Versailles, Peace Treaty) 

"Peace without victory," 211-212, 288; 
German championship of, 297 

Pearse, Padraic, 161 

Pepper Ridge, 152-153 

Permanent Court of International Justice, 
4i7 

Peronne, 177-178, 272; captured, 273, 306, 
326 

Pershing, John J., 223, 313, 323 

Persia, and Turkey, 136-137 ; restoration. 
254 ; nationalism, 397 ; and Great Brit- 
ain, 399 

Persian Gulf, 137 

Perthes, capture of, 114 

Peru, severs relations with Germany, 271, 
388 

Pessoa, Epitacio, 368 

Petain, General, 151, 155, 276, 301, 304- 
30S.313. 320-321, 358 

Peter, King of Serbia, 57, 129, 135, 354, 
402 

Petrograd, and the revolution, 227-228, 
230, 232, 245, 247; Council of Work- 
men's Deputies, 228 

Petroseny coal basin, 259 

Pflanzer, General von, 47, 100, 105 

Philip II, of Spain, 396 

Philippines, 12, 397 

Piave River, 295-297, 317-320, 352 

Picardy, Battle of, 304-313 

Pichon, Stephen, 293, 368 

"Pillboxes," 279 

Pilsudski, General, ig6, 350, 359 

Plebiscite, of peoples ceded to Poland, 
375; of Schleswig, 375; Saar basin, 
381 ; Schleswig and Poland, 381 ; Fiume, 
385 ; Teschen, 385 

Plevlie, captured, 135 

Plock, 46 

Ploechti, captured, 192 

Plumer, Sir Herbert, 307, 329 

Plunkett, Sir Horace, 310 

Pneumonia, deaths, caused by war, 390 

Poincare, President, 369 

Poisonous gases, 115-117, 177, 408 

Pojarevatz, captured, 127 

Pola, captured, 353 



Poland, 41 ; invasion of, 45, 50-55 ; au- 
tonomy, 53-54. 195-196, 237, 254, 256, 
290, 298, 349-351. 383; conquered by 
the Germans, 102-107, 300; German 
professions of friendship, 145; committee 
of National Defense, 196; and Russia, 
230 ; and Germany, 266-267 ; and Ukrai- 
nia, 270; territorial demands, 366, 371; 
acquires Posen and West Prussia, etc., 
374; plebiscite, 3S1 ; eastern boundaries, 
387; starvation in, 390; food supply, 
393 ; nationalism, 397 ; republican gov- 
ernment, 402 

Poles, of Galicia, 263 

Polish army, advancing towards Posen, 
359; statistics, 389 

Political democracy, Bolshevist policy, 
248-249; general, 402-405 

Polivanov, General, 109 

Polotzk, captured, 258 

"Passeront pas," 148-155 

Poole, General, 340 

Populations, Allied nations and Central 
Powers compared, 81 

Port Arthur, 64 

Portugal, proposed partition of colonies, 6 ; 
enters the war, 162-163; royalist uprising, 
402 

Portuguese army, in France, 308; losses, 
389 

Posen, ceded to Poland, 374 

Posina, captured, 174 

Potsdam Conference (1914), 14-16 

Power, Balance of. (See Balance of power) 

Powers, the Great, 5-6; at war, 18; Five, 
95 ; changes in, 398 

Prague, riots, 349; Pan-Slavic Congress, 
350; Assembly of Czechs and Jugo- 
slavs at, 350-351 

Prahovo, captured, 127 

Preliminary Peace Conference, Paris, 367- 
372. (See also Peace Conference) 

Preparedness, German and Russian, 100; 
U. S., 220-224 

Presidential campaign, 1916, 208 

Press censorship. (See Censorship, press) 

Preventive medicine, development of, 409 

Pria Fora, captured, 157 

Prilep, captured, 129, 345 

Prinkipo Island, conference of all-Russian 
factions, 387 

Prints, destroyed at Louvain, 377 

Prinz Eitcl Friedrich (Cruiser), 61 

Prishtina, captured, 129 

Prisrend, captured, 129 

Production, post-War, 407 

Profit-sharing, post-War, 407-408 

Profiteering, post-War, 406 



INDEX 



455 



Profits, excess, 222; post-War, 406 
Progressives, in Germany, 266-268 
Prohibition of alcoholic beverages, 405 
Proletarian dictatorship, 249 
Proletariat, the governing class in Germany, 

363 
Propaganda, German, 147, _ 268, 289-291 ; 

Entente, 207-208; Allied, in U. S., 212, 

215; Allied, in Austria, 317; in Russia, 

236-239, 241, 245, 255; Socialist, 254; 

Bolshevist, 255-256, 259, 342; separatist, 

in Austria-Hungary,, 349 
Proportional representation, 403-404 
Protopopov, Minister of the Interior, 194, 

226-227, 237 
Provisional government, of Russia, 229- 

230, 232, 234-237, 239-241, 243-244, 

246-248, 252, 340-341; of Austro-Hun- 

garian peoples, 349 
Prunay, captured, 321 
Prussia, constitution, 9 ; militarism, 8- 

13, 82; electoral reforms, 269, 331 
Przasnysz, capture of, 105 
Przemysl, 43-48, 99, 101 
Pskov, captured, 258 
Psycho-analysis, development of, 409 
Psychology, scientific study of, 409 
Public works, destroyed by the Germans, 

394; debts of belligerent nations, 391 
Putilov Armament Company, no 

Quast, General von, 303, 307 
Queant, British objective, 275 ; cap- 
tured, 328 
Queen Elizabeth (Warship), 85, SS 
Queen Mary (Cruiser), 165 

Rada, of the Little Russians, 255 

Radek, Karl, 363 

Radicals, in Germany, 266-268; in France, 
292 

Radom, captured, 105 

Radoslavoff, Premier, 124-125, 344 

Rafa, railroad to Kantara, 285 

Raids on coast towns, 74; on Paris, 74; 
air-raids, 390 

Railroad engineers, American, and the 
Trans-Siberian railway, 340-341 

Railways, Poland, 104-107; Serbia, 127; 
Berlin-to-Constantinoplc, 134, 136, 282; 
Berlin-to-Bagdad, 136-137; Mecca, 136- 
137; German, 144; Sinai desert, 183, 
282, 285; Rumania, 188-189; govern- 
ment control, U. S., 223 ; Russia, 228, 
25g; international control, 2go; France, 
307, 310, 329; Paris to Chalons, 314; 
Paris to Nancy, 320; Siberia, 335, 338- 



341 ; Murman railway, 339-340 ; Bul- 
garia, 345 ; Austria, 353 ; German cars 
surrendered, 357 ; stations destroyed, 
394; Cape-to-Cairo, 399; nationaliza- 
tion in Gt. Brit., 406 

Ramadie, captured, 284 

Rapallo, Conference of France, Gt. Brit., 
and Italy at, 271 

Rasputin, Gregory, 225-226 

Rawaruska, captured, 101 

Rawlinson, General, 326, 329 

Rayak, captured, 347 

Reactionaries, Germany, 363 

Reconstruction, political in Russia, 237 ; 
of society, post-War, 408 

Red Cross Society, 410; organizations, 
and the League of Nations covenant, 
422 

Red flags, in Germany, 361-362 

Red Guards, 247, 250 

Redmond, John, 66, 159 

Redmond, Major William, 278 

Redoubts, concrete, 279 

Regneville, captured, 277 

Reichsrat, Austria, 349-350 

Reichstag, Germany, 9, 267-268, 300- 
301 

Religious freedom, 265, 386, 397, 401 

Rennenkampf, General, 42, 43, 46 

Renner, Karl, 356 

Republicanism, and the War, 402 

Restoration of occupied territories, 291 

Rethel, captured, 332 

Rethondes, armistice signed at, 357 

Reval, captured, 258 ; Russian harbor zone, 
34i 

Reventlow, 213, 267 

Revolution, French, and nationalization, 
3; industrial, 205. (See also Russia, 
revolution) 

Rheims, captured, 33-34; attack on, 316; 
Cathedral, 394 

Rhine bridgeheads, occupied by Allied 
troops, 357, 377 

Ribot, Alexandre, 83, 193, 276, 292-293 

Richebourg St. Vaast, captured, 308 

Riga, 106, 171; captured, 244; Russian 
harbor zone, 341 

Robertson, 169 

Rochambeau, 203 

Rockets, 303 

Rodzianko, 109, 228-229 

Rogers, D. G., 391 

Rohrbach, Paul, 69 

Roman Catholic Church. (See Catholic 
Church) 

Romanov dynasty, 226, 228-229, 232, 
402. (See also Nicholas, Tsar) 



456 



INDEX 



Rome, Congress of Oppressed Nationali- 
ties, 350 

Roon, 8 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 208 

Root, Elihu, 208, 235 

Roques, General, 166, 193 

Rostov, 255 

Roubaix, captured, 332 

Roulers, captured, 332 

Rovereto, 91, 156 

Roye, captured, 326 

Rumania, and Russia, 47 ; and Bulgaria, 
84; and the Entente, 84; keeps peace, 
96; neutrality, 11 2-1 13; territorial 
demands, 123-124, 366; enters the 
War, 181-191 ; railroads, 188; collapses, 
191; truce with Central Powers, 253; 
restoration of territory, 254, 298; Allied 
failure, 282; treaty of Bucharest, 297, 
346 ; vanquished, 300 ; reenters the 
War, 346; autonomy, 349; territorial 
demands, 371 ; treaty not ratified, 383 ; 
food supply, 393 ; nationalism, 397 ; 
universal suffrage, 404 

Rumanian army, losses, 189, 389; repels 
Mackensen's attack, 243 

Rumans of Transylvania and Bukowina, 
47, 263 

Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, 27, 
29, 36, 150, 185, 304 

Russia, alliances with France and Great 
Britain, 6, 69; approach of the War, 15- 
20, 24-25 ; German plans for invasion of, 
40; imperialism, 54-55, 202; invasion 
of Galicia, 80 ; outlet for grain trade, 
83; retreats, 99-120; Duma, 107, 109- 
in, 194, 225-230, 232, 234, 236; polit- 
ical unrest, 107-112; condition of 
peasants, 108; Revolution, 111-112, 
197, 203, 217, 225-260, 262, 269; de- 
clares war against Bulgaria, 125-126; 
isolation, 144; War Industries Com- 
mittee, 194; Union of Municipalities, 
194, 225; and Poland, 195-196; and 
the German peace, 198 ; revolts and makes 
"peace," 225-260; Council of the Em- 
pire, 225 ; destruction of autocracy, 
the March (1917) revolution, 225-331; 
Committee of Workmen, 2?7; Council 
of Workmen's Deputies, 228; Constit- 
uent Assembly, 228-229, 244, 248- 
252, 341; Provisional Government, 229- 
248, 252, 340-341; disintegration of 
democracy ; political and military ex- 
periments, 231-246; war-weariness, 233; 
territorial demands, 233, 252-253; rail- 
roads, 243 ; Council of National Defense, 
245; Preliminary Parliament, 246; dicta- 



torship of the Bolsheviki; the Nov. 
(1917) revolution, 246-252; Council of 
the People's Commissioners, 247 ; All- 
Russian Extraordinary Commission, 249 ; 
Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, 
constitution, 249; defection of; the 
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 252-260; dis- 
integration, 255 ; out of the War, 257- 
258; Russo-German commercial treaty 
of 1904, 259; manufacturing industries, 
259; repudiation of foreign debt, 260; 
restoration of all territory, 298; indem- 
nity to Germany, 341 ; All-Russian gov- 
ernment, 341 ; public debt, 391-392 ; 
nationalism, 396-397 
Russia, Little, independence, 238, 255 
Russia. White, self-determination, 336 
Russian army, organization, 23 ; mobi- 
lization, 41-43; position, 49-52; battle- 
lines, 51, 104, 107, 171; losses, 51, 101, 
108, 258, 389; equipment, 105; reor- 
ganization, 171; undermined by Ger- 
man propaganda, 238; renewed activ- 
ity, 241-243 ; demobilization, 258 
Russian Church, Bolshevist policy, 248 
Russian navy, victory, Aug. 20, 1915, 106 
Russo-Japanese war, contrasted with the 

Great War, 108 
Ruthenians, autonomy, 238, 349; Con- 
gress at Kiev, 238; of Galicia, 263, 385 
Ruzsky, General, 44, 46, 51, 228-229 

Saar Basin, 370, 375 ; Commission, 381 

Saarbriicken, occupied by Allies, 358 

Saairburg, captured, 22, 28 

Saillisel, captured, 180 

Sailly, captured, 180 

St. Germain, treaty signed by Austria at, 

383 

St. Gobain, emplacement of German long 
range guns at, 304 

St. Mihiel, 34; salient, 114-115; cap- 
tured, 328-329 

St. Quentin, captured, 39, 329 

St. Quentin (Mont), captured, 273 

Saionji, Marquis, 36S-369 

Sakharov, Vladimir, 188 

Salandra, Premier, 94, 158 

Salaries, post-War, 406 

Salonica, 129-136, 183, 185, 191, 284, 

344 

Salvation Army, 410 

Samara, 137, captured, 284, 338 

Samoa, surrenders, 67 ; cession to New Zea- 
land, 375 

Samogneux, captured, 277 

San, Battle of the, 101 

San Domingo. (See Santo Domingo) 



INDEX 



457 



San Giovanni di Medua, 135 

San Giuliano, Marquis, 90 

San Michele, Monte, 176 

Sanders, Liman von, 88, 347 

Sanitation, development of, 409 

Sanna-i-yat, 141; captured, 283 

Santo Domingo, German conspirators, 
207; severs relations with Germany, 
271, 388 

Sari-Bair, 122 

Sarrail, General, 33, 131-133; 183, 185, 
189-191, 262, 284-285 

Saverne affair, 9 

Sazonov, 194 

Scandinavia, loss of trade, 79; reduction 
of armaments, 360. (See also Denmark, 
Norway, Sweden) 

Scapa Flow, German navy, at 359 

Scarborough, raided, 74 

Scharnhorst, General, 8 

Schamhorst (Cruiser), 60 

Scheer, Vice- Admiral von, 165 

Scheidemann, Philip, 166, 267, 289, 331, 
360, 363-364. 372 

Scheldt River, freed from Dutch restric- 
tions, 385 

Schleswig, cession to Denmark, 360, 375, 
397 ; plebiscite, 381 

Schools, and the Allied peace treaties, 
386 ; among the troops at the front, 410 

Science and education, 408-410 

"Scrap of paper," 19, 91-92 

Scrutin de liste, 403 

Scutari, captured, 135 

Sea, power, importance of, 58-62 ; diffi- 
culties at, in 1916, 162-167. (See also 
Freedom of the seas) 

Secret pacifist campaign in Italy, 293 ; 
diplomacy to be abolished, 298 

Secret treaties, Treaty of London, 20, 
Q2-93, 95 ; Bulgaria with Austria-Hun- 
gary, and Turkey, 84, 1 25 ; Entente, 
220, 252-253, 367 ; forbidden at the Brest- 
Litovsk Conference, 254; Japan and the 
Entente, 370 

Security League, Germany, 13 

Sedan, captured, 39, 332 

Sedd-el-Bahr, 85-86, 88 

Seidler, Dr. von, 265, 269-270, 349-350 

Seisemol, Monte, 352 

Seitz, Karl, 356 

Selective Service Act, U. S., 222 

Self-determination, 396-397; Russia, 233; 
White Russia, 336; Congress held in 
Rome, 350; Ireland, 387 

Self-interest, in pre-War economics, 1-7 

Semendria, captured, 127 

Semenov, General, 337 



Semlin, fall of, 56 

Serajevo, 14 

Serbia, 14-20; enters the War, 17-18, 
20; security of, 55-57; and the Allies, 
73> 95-Q6; vanquished, 126, 300; troops 
assembled against, 131; territorial de- 
mands, 254, 298, 366, 371 ; Allied failure, 
282 ; evacuation by Bulgars, 345 ; inde- 
pendence, 263, 383 ; food supply, 393 ; 
nationalism, 397 

Serbian army, battle-lines, 127-128, 132; 
losses, 56-57, 126, 389 

Serbians, dead through disease or massacre, 
3QO 

Sereth River, 173-174; Battle of, 243 

Sergy, captured, 323 

Seringes, captured, 323 

Sezanne, 32 

Shabatz, Battle of, 56 

Shantung railway, 63-64; and Japan, 
220, 370, 375, 380-381, 400 

Shingarev, Minister of agriculture, 230 

Shipbuilding, program, U. S., 223; Gt. 
Brit., and U. S., 322 

Shipping act, U. S., 222 

Shipping, German rules for safety against 
submarines, 214-215; destroyed, 216, 
220-224, 394-305 ; damages paid by 
Germany, 377 

Ships, German, seized, 222 

Shop-stewards, post-War, 407 

Shumran Peninsula, captured, 283 

Siam, enters the War, 271 ; German rights 
renounced, 375 

Siberia, liberation of prisoners, 230; in- 
dependence, 255; Trans-Siberian rail- 
way, 338, 340-341 ; and Mittel-Europa, 
355; and the Soviets, 337; Temporary 
Siberian government, 341 ; and Japan, 
400 

Sick Man of the East, 347 

Siegfried Line. (See Hindenburg Line) 

Silesia, occupied by Czechoslovaks, 359 

Simbirsk, captured, 338 

Sinai Desert, railroad, 282-283, cam- 
paign, 285 

Sinha, Sir S. P., 368 

Sinn Fein Rebellion, 1 58-1 61, 310-312, 
387, 403 

Sixtus, Prince of Bourbon, 266 

Skobelev, Minister of Labor, 234 

Skoropadsky, Dictator of Ukrainia, 334, 359 

Skouloudis, Premier, 132 

Slave trade, and the League of Nations 
covenant, 401, 421 

Slavic Peril, 13, 24, 266 

Slavs, German domination, 263 

Slovakia, cession to Czechoslovakia, 384 



458 



INDEX 



Slovaks of Hungary, rebellion, 263 

Slovenes, independence, 263 ; Jugoslav 
control, 354 

Small holdings, post-War, 407 

Smuts, General, 67-68, 368, 374 

Smyrna, and Greece, 87, 123, 366; Greek 
mandatary, 384 

Social Democratic Party in Russia, 108, 
no, 232, 236, 23g 

Social Democrats, in Germany n, 21, 166- 
167 ; in Austria, 356 

Social unrest, 377-378; tendencies, post- 
war, 406-408; Catholics, post -War, 
407, 410; sciences, scientific study of, 
409 

Socialism, in commerce, 1-7 ; in Belgium, 
27; in Germany, 82, 152, 266-268, 290, 
299. 33i, 356, 360-364, 372-373; in 
France, 197, 290; in Russia, 239, 289, 
336, 398; propaganda, in Russia, 254; 
a negotiated peace, 288-289; Christian, 
in Austria, 356; in Hungary. 384; post- 
war, 406-407 

Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia, 
232, 239 

Socialists' International Peace Conference, 
at Stockholm, 267, 289-292 

Sociology, scientific study of, 409 

Sofia, Secret Convention of Bulgaria, and 
the Dual Monarchy at, 125 

Sofia-to-Berlin, railroads, 282 

Soissons, captured, 315, 323 

Sokal, in Russian hands, 44, 101 

Soldiers' and sailors' insurance act, U. S., 
222 

Solf, W. S., 331 

Solomon Islands, 67 

Somaliland, Italy's hold on, 400 

Somme Drive, 177-182 

Sommeilles, destruction of, 38 

Sonnino, Sidney, 90, 158, 198, 297, 368, 
37i 

Sophia, Queen of Greece, 1 23 

Souchez, captured, 118 

Soukhomlinov, General, 109, 226 

Sounds in water, detection of, 409 

South Africa. {See Africa, South) 

South Sea islands, loss of, by the Germans, 
67 

Souville, Fort, 155 

Soviets, 228, 232-234, 237, 240-241, 244- 
249 ; Congress of, 247 ; constitution, 249 ; 
Declaration of the rights of the people, 
250-252; accepts German peace terms, 
258; peace with Finland, 259 ; andMittel- 
Europa, 335-336, 341 ; treaties with 
Ukrainia and Finland, 336; and Ger- 
man socialism, 364 ; in Hungary, 384 



Spa, headquarters of William II, 304; 
secret German conference at, 327-328; 
flight of William II to, 360 

Spain, loss of trade, 79 ; reduction of arma- 
ments, 360; anti-royalist demonstra- 
tions, 402 

Spargo, John, Bolshevism, 250 

Spartacus group of socialists, 362-363, 
373 

Spee, Admiral von, 60 

Spinning industry destroyed, 394 

Spiritualism, and the War, 411 

Spitzbergen, cession to Norway, 385 

" Spurlos versenkt," 271 

Stalemate and the Teutonic Peace Drive, 
191-200 

Stanislau, captured, 243 

Starvation, and the War, 390; in Armenia, 
393 

State-system of Germany, 398; inter- 
vention in labor disputes, 406, 408; 
socialism, post-War, 406-407 

Steamships, German rules for safety against 
submarines, 214-215 

Stevens, John R., 340 

Stockholm, Socialists' International Peace 
Conference at, 267, 289-292 

Straits, neutralization of, 254 

Strassburg, captured, 22, 358 

Strikes, U. S., 207; in Russia, 225, 227 

Strumnitza, captured, 345 

Stryj, captured, 101 

Sturdee, Vice-Admiral, 60 

Stiirgkh, Karl, 264 

Sturmer, Boris, 111-112, 194, 226, 237 

Sturmtruppen, 302, 306 

Styr River, 176 

Submarine cables, surrendered by Ger- 
many, 377 

Submarines, 75-78, 82, 149, 152, 160, 162- 
166, 206, 212-224, 261, 266-268, 271- 
272, 278, 287-288, 300, 308, 322, 332, 
339, 353, 357, 359, 376, 390; bases for, 
35 ; British, 88 ; losses from sinkings 
by, 322; development of, 408 

Suez Canal, attacks by Turks, 72; 283, 
German control, 137; neutralization, 254 

Suez-to-Singapore project, 72 

Suffrage, Soviet restrictions, 241 ; in Gt. 
Brit., 262 ; in Jugoslavia, 265 ; in Ger- 
many, 361-362; universal, 403-404. 
(See also Electoral reforms, Woman 
suffrage) 

Supreme Allied Council, 374 

Supreme Council of Ten, of the Preliminary 

Peace Conference, 370 
Supreme Council of the Peace Conference, 
383 



INDEX 



459 



Supreme War Council, Inter-Allied, 271- 
272, 312, 369 

Surgery, military, development of, 4og 

Sussex (Steamboat), 163-164 

Suvla Bay, 122, 133 

Suwalki, 43 

Sweden, submarine restrictions, 163; anti- 
royalist demonstrations, 402. (See also 
Scandinavia) 

Switzerland, reduction of armaments, 360; 
supplying food to the Tyrol, 393 

Syria, Turkish sovereignty, 136; mas- 
sacres and starvation in, 390; French 
mandatary, 384, 400 

Taft, William H., 208 

Tagliamento River, 295-296 

Tahure, captured, 11S, 321 

Talaat Pasha, 347 

Tank warfare, 177-178, 180, 323, 408 

Tannenberg, Battle of, 53 

Tardenois, captured, 323 

Tariffs, most-favored-nation, 377 

Tarnopol, captured, 44, 243 ; Russian 
control, 101 

Tarnow, occupied by the Germans, 101 

Taxes, income tax, 222; war, 392 

Tchaikovsky, Nicholas, 340 

Tcheidze (Soviet leader), 234, 239, 245, 
247 

Tchernov, Victor, 234, 239-240, 341 

Telephone, wireless, development of, 409 

Ten, Supreme Council of, of the Prelim- 
inary Peace Conference, 370 

Teodorov, General, 127 

Terestchenko, Minister of Finance, 230, 
234_ 

Tergnier, captured, 273 

Teschen, plebiscite, 385 

Texas, as bribe to Mexico, 216 

Thann, 34 

"They shall not pass," 148-155 

Thiaumont redoubt, 155 

Thiepval, captured, 180 

Thomas, Albert, 169, 193, 235 

Thomas, Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh, 165 

Thorn, 42 

Thrace, cession to Bulgaria, 84, 87; ces- 
sion to Greece, 366, 383; and Turkey, 
343 ; cession to the Allies,- 383 

Three, Council of, 370 

Tiberias, captured, 347 

Tirpitz, Admiral von, 59, 152, 163-164, 
213, 267 

Tisza, Count, 102, 265 

Tittoni, Tommaso, 371 

Togoland, 67 ; partitioned, 375 ; man- 
datary under France, 400 



Tolmino, cession to Italy, 91 

Tomba, Monte, captured, 296 

Tomsk, Temporary Government of Au- 
tonomous Siberia at, 337 

Torcy, captured, 323 

Torpedoes, North Sea, 59; vessels sunk 
by, 395 

Toul, 18, 31 

Tourcoing, captured, 332 

Townshend, General, 137-139, 141-142, 
183, 283, 347 

Trade. {See Commerce) 

Trade-unions, Germany, 363 ; post-War, 
406, 408 

Trading-with-the-enemy act, U. S., 222 

Trans-Siberian railway, 338; and Ameri- 
can engineers, 340-341 

Transit, freedom of, and the League of 
Nations Covenant, 422 

Transportation, maritime, 169; govern- 
ment control, 406 

Transvaal, loyalty, 66 

Transylvania, 47, 123, 186-187; union 
with Rumania, 354; cession to Ru- 
mania, 384 

Treaties, U. S., with France, promising 
aid against Germany, 381 ; signed by 
Austria and Bulgaria, 383 ; action, of 
U. S., on Allied peace treaties, 387 ; Arti- 
cles 18-21 in the League of Nations 
covenant, 420. (See also Secret treaties) 

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. (See Brest- 
Litovsk Treaty) 

Treaty of Bucharest, 259, 297, 300, 317, 
346, 357, 364 

Treaty of London, 20, 92-93, 95 

Treaty of Peace, Versailles, 357, 374 

Treaty, peace, Finland, with Germary, 
Austria and Russia, 259; Allies, with 
Austria, 386 

Trebizond, captured, 140 

Trench warfare, 36, 45, 51, 80, n 3-1 20, 
122, 133, 150, 153, 175-178, 192, 223, 
242, 273, 279, 300, 328 

Trent, 91; autonomy, 254; captured, 
352 

Trentino, 91-97, 102, 156-158; 174-175, 
253 ; and Pope Benedict, 291 

Trepov, Alexander, 194, 226 

Trieste, 91, 94; autonomy, 254; captured, 
352 

Triple Alliance, Italy with Central Powers, 
90; of France with Gt. Brit., and U. S., 

383 
Tripoli, captured, 347; Italy's hold on t 

400 
Triumph (Battleship), 88 
Troesnes, captured, 315 



460 



INDEX 



Trotsky, Leon, 240-241, 244, 247, 250, 
252-253, 257, 338, 384 

Troyon, 34 

Trumbitch, Anton, 265, 354 

Tsars, 231, 237, 248-249, 257, 260 

Tseretelli, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, 
234, 239, 241, 245 

Tsing-tao (Fortress), 63-64 

Turin, riots, 293 

Turkestan, independence, 255 

Turkey, in igi2, 6; and Germany, 1S96- 
1914, 12, 69-73; enters the War, 60, 70- 
71 ; and the Dardanelles, 83 ; partition of, 
92 ; effect of entry into the War upon the 
Balkan States, 121; treaty with Bulgaria, 
125; made a military base, 134-135: 
autonomy of peoples, 298; dismember- 
ment, 300, 396; surrenders, 342-348; 
"Sick Man of the East," 347; conclusion 
of peace, 3S4 ; disrupted, 396 ; national- 
ism, 396-397; mandataries, 401, 421. 
(See also Young Turks) 

Turkish army, defeated, 139-140; losses, 
140, 283, 347, 389; to be demobilized, 348 

Turkish atrocities, 82 ; famine and mas- 
sacres, 390 

Turnu-Severin, captured, 188 

Typhus, in Serbia, 57 

Tyrol, 93 ; food supply, 393 

Tyrwhitt, Admiral, 359 

Udine, captured, 295, 352 
Ufa, National Convention at, 341 
Ukrainia, autonomy, 238, 263, 349, 359 ; 
People's Republic, 255, 257; and Poland, 
270; vanquished, 300; and Mittel- 
Europa, 334; territorial demands, 373 ; 
starvation in, 390 ; nationalism, 397 ; 
republican form of government, 402 
Ukrainians, weakening loyalty to Russia, 54 ; 

of Eastern Galicia, 385 
Ulster rebellion, Ireland, 158-161, 310-312, 

387, 403 
Ulyanov, Vladimir. (Sec Lenin, Nikolai) 
Union of Municipalities, Russia, 194, 225 
United States, transportation of munitions 
and supplies, 62, 65, 75, 83, 100, 261 ; aid 
counted on by Germany, 75 ; right of 
neutral trade, 76; loss of trade, 78-79; 
and the Grand Fleet, 162-167; as an 
enemy of Germany, 163; proposed relief 
for Poland, 196-197 ; intervention in the 
War, 200-224; isolation, or a League of 
Nations, 201-212; alliance with France, 
203; feeling towards Gt. Brit., 204; 
feeling towards Germany, 204, 206; trade 
in munitions, 206; and unrestricted sub- 
marine warfare, 213-219; enters the War, 



218; at war with Austria-Hungary, 218, 
266; preparedness, 219-224; Committee 
on Public Information, 222; Selective 
Service Act, 222; joins Allies, 271; aid 
to Allies, 287-288; not represented at 
Stockholm Peace Conference, 290; delay 
in giving aid to Allies, 297, 300 ; no terri- 
torial ambitions, 366-367; alliance with 
Gt. Brit, and France, 370, 383 ; treaty 
with France promising aid against Ger- 
many, 381 ; ratification of Treaty of 
Versailles, 382 ; action on Allied peace 
treaties, 387 ; public debt, 391-392 ; loans 
to Allies, 392 ; imperialism, 400 

United States army, American Expeditionary 
Force, 219, 261, 329; transportation sta- 
tistics, 219, 322; mobilization, 222; selec- 
tive draft, 222; arrival in France, 223; at 
Chateau-Thierry, 316; at the Second 
Battle of the Marne, 321-323; battle- 
line, 323; aid to Allies, 326-327; at St. 
Mihiel, 329; in Coblenz, 359; losses, 389 

United States navy, 224; losses, 395 

Unity of command, 168-169; German army, 
144, 302 ; Supreme War Council, 271-272 ; 
Allied armies, 277, 312-313 

Universal suffrage. (See Suffrage) 

Unrest, social, 377-378 

Urbal, General d', 118 

Uruguay, severs relations with Germany, 
271, 388 

Uskub, captured, 127 

Valenciennes, captured, 30, 39, 332 

Valievo, 56 

Valois, captured, 323 

Vandervelde, Emile, 27, 235, 289, 368 

Vardar (Battle), 132 

Vaux, captured, 155, 192 

Veles, captured, 127 

Venereal disease, 409 

Venezuela, and Germany in 1903, 12 

Venice, menaced, 296, 318 

Venizelos, Eleutherios, 84, 87, 95, 123, 129- 
134, 190-191, 284-285, 344, 368 

Verdun, 18, 31-34, 148-155, 182, 184, 277, 
281 

Versailles, Peace Treaty, 357; Peace Con- 
gress, 367; submission of peace terms to 
Germany at, 372; Treaty of, signed, 374; 
Covenant, 398 

Vervins, captured, 39 

Vesle River, 314 

Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy, 176 

Vienna, to Constantinople, railroads, 282; 
Revolution, 355 ; food supply, 393 

VigUancia (ship), 216 

Vigneuilles, captured, 329 



INDEX 



461 



Villers Cotterets Forest, 322 

Vilna, captured, 107 

Vimy Ridge, 118; captured, 275, 277 

Vishegrad, 57 

Viviani, Rene, 83, 145, 220 

Vladivostok, Temporary Government of 
Autonomous Siberia at, 337 ; captured, 
338; Allied Expeditionary Force at, 339- 

34i 
Volhynia, 173 
Volo, c&ptured, 284 
Vologodsky, Peter, 341 
Vouziers, captured, 332 
Vulcan Pass, 188 

Wages, and the Treaty of Versailles, 378; 
post-War, 406 

Wallachia, captured, 188-189 

War, the (See Great War) 

War-aims, Conference to Revise, at Paris, 
246-247 

War-aims, reply of Allies and Central Powers 
to President Wilson's note on, 209-210; 
Allies', 253, 2 72, 297-298 

War Cabinet, Allied, 404 

War Council, Anglo-French, 169 

War credits, 21; zone, around the British 
Isles, 76, 78; loans in Germany, 81; 
service in Germany, 195; material, Ger- 
many not to produce, 375 ; material, 
manufacture of, 415-416; taxes, 392; 
profits, taxes on, 392 ; psychology, 405- 
406 ; industries, government control of, 
406 

War Industries Committee, Russia, 194, 225 

War-weariness, 197, 212; in Great Britain, 
146-147; in Russia, 233, 247, 252; in 
Germany, 266, 372; Allies, 287-288, 297; 
in France, 291 ; in Bulgaria, 343 

Warsaw, 46; German drive against, 51-52; 
defended, 99 ; a railway center, 104 ; cap- 
tured, 105-106 

Washington, George, 203-204, 211, 400 

Water, detection of sounds in, 409 

Water-supply, at Gallipoli, 122 

Weapons, development of, 408 

Weimar, National Assembly at, 363 

Wettin, House of, 402 

Wheat, Rumanian and Wallachian, 192 

Whitby, raided, 74 

White, Henry, 368 

White Guards, Finland, 334-335 



White Russia, self-determination, 336 

Whitlock, Brand, 39 

Wieringen, refuge of the German Crown 
Prince, 362 

Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands, 377 

Wilhelmina (Steamship), 76 

Wilhelmshaven, 59 

William I, of Germany, 361, 367 

William II, of Germany, 64, 259, 267, 270, 
304, 317, 320, 325, 327-328, 334-330. 342, 
356, 360-362, 364, 377, 396 

Wilson, Sir Henry, 272, 313 

Wilson, Woodrow, 79, 164, 208-212, 215- 
218, 244, 262, 266, 291, 297-298, 312, 
331-332, 347, 352, 356-357, 367-371, 374, 
370-387, 415 

Windau, captured, 105; Russian harbor 
zone, 341 

Wireless telephone, 221, 409 

Wittelsbach, House of, 402 

Woevre plain, 1 51-15 2 

Woman suffrage, 262, 403. (See also Elec- 
toral reforms ; Suffrage) 

Women, members of the German National 
Assembly, 364 ; League of Nations, posi- 
tions open to, 415; traffic in, and the 
League of Nations covenant, 422 

Workmen's Deputies, Council of, 228 

World-dominion, 58, 201-202, 211, 396, 411 

World made safe for democracy, 217 

Woyrsch, General, 52, 100, 105 

Wytschaete, captured, 278, 308 

Yarmouth, raided, 74 

Yellow Peril, 64 

Young Men's Christian Association, 410 

Young Turks Party, 70-71, 82, 282, 343, 347 

Ypres, 35-36, 115-116, 278-280 

Yudenitch, General, 140 

Zabern. (See Saverne) 

Zaimis, Premier, 285 

Zamosc, capture of, 105 

Zara, raided by D'Annunzio, 385-386 

Zeebrugge, 35-36, 278; harbor closed by 
ships sunk at, 310; captured, 332 

Zemstvos, All-Russian Union of, 194 

Zenson, captured, 296 

Zeppelins, 74 

Zimmermann, Alfred, 197, 216 

Zionism, 287, 397. (See also Jews; Pales- 
tine) 



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